


Sydney: Season Two

by CRebel



Series: Sydney Rose Dixon [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Coming of Age, Father-Daughter Relationship, Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 15:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12656679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CRebel/pseuds/CRebel
Summary: "All of the things that used to be a given, they're gone. And me? Me, Sydney Rose Dixon, I lost my mother and my grandparents and my uncle and my friend Tyler and almost everyone else I ever loved or even liked a little." Sydney moves on with her dad and the group, leaving Atlanta and winding up on a farm, where she and the others encounter new problems in a world gone to hell.





	1. Memories and Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing of *The Walking Dead.*

The world ended. Jacqui, who's dead now, once said  _The world seems to have come to an end -_ I can hear her saying that, clear as a bell. The world ended, all because dead people started walking around trying to eat everything that moves, including people. Now there are no schools or hospitals or cell phones or the President, not anymore. All of the things that used to be a given, they're gone.

And me? Me, Sydney Rose Dixon, I lost my mother and my grandparents and my uncle and my friend Tyler and almost everyone else I ever loved or even liked a little. I lost both of my houses. The .22 rifle my dad taught me to shoot with. All of my clothes and books and movies and everything. I lost my great little throwing knife and I lost the one picture I had of my mom.

I'm just saying – I lost  _a lot_.

And now, just when I was starting to think I was kind of running out of stuff I could lose, my dad's truck is being taken from me, too.

That's where I am now. In his truck. The passenger side, where I've always ridden. It's my spot.

The others – our group's smaller than ever, with just me and my dad, the Grimes family, Sophia and Carol, Dale, Andrea, Glenn, T-Dog, and Shane – they're all outside, weaving around, busy as bees, talking in serious tones because that's just how people talk these days. We're in front of an empty nursing home we stayed in last night, the place my dad and some others came across when they were searching for my uncle (who Rick Grimes handcuffed to a roof, but that's another story that I really don't want to get into), only back then the place had people. Old people and the young people who were protecting them. But when we came back to it yesterday, looking for shelter after the CDC exploded, the nursing home had been raided and all of the people there had been shot in the head. Murdered. Their bodies left for the walkers.

I don't want to think about that. Bad enough we had to spend the night in there. I slept with my head on Dad's leg and it was still hard.

Anyway, not the point.

What I was getting at is that the people outside of the truck – my dad included – they're all working in the sun, helping, even the other kids. Most of the group is organizing and moving what little stuff we have left – what little stuff that didn't get blown up – between the vehicles, and my dad and T-Dog are finishing up sucking the fuel out of the ones we're leaving behind . . . meaning Shane's jeep, T-Dog's church van, and my dad's truck. My dad's truck.  _My_  truck.

And right now – and even though I  _should_ be helping – I sit in here. Because I have to say goodbye. I breathe out, long and slow, and try to figure out how to say it. I really don't want to.

I never thought too much about this truck, if I'm being honest. It was just  _there_. A fact of life. I never considered all it had to do with, but it's coming to me now . . . This truck, it's a moving, living part of my weekends with Dad. The weekends I loved, perfect days when I didn't have to be a lawyer's well-mannered daughter but I didn't have to watch out for walkers, either. This truck is part of tracking a deer through the woods, part of shooting bottles off a fence in the middle of nowhere. This truck smells like sweat and dirt and the cigarettes my dad never has anymore. My dad, my dad used to let me sit on his lap and steer this truck down backroads, and I was good at it. This truck drove me to and from Dad's place. It was my hello and it was my goodbye.

Now it's just a goodbye. One more goodbye. One more piece of my old life going down the drain.

A shadow comes over me. My dad's familiar arms, dirty and scarred, cross over the window sill. My goodbye's about to be cut short, I guess. I keep my eyes down, and before he can speak I go ahead and say, "I know we have to leave it," because I don't want him to tell me why again. I  _know_ why – fuel. Survival.

It's still hard.

Dad sighs. I feel it in my hair. Neither of us talks for a second, but then he reaches an arm in and opens the glove box. I watch him fiddle around for a while, shoving aside crumpled papers and a Skoal can before he draws out his old wallet, made of brown leather and beat up as anything. "Had to make sure to grab this."

Somehow I find a little smile, because I'm tough about hard stuff. "Whatcha gonna buy?"

"Ain't like I ever had much money to spend." He opens the wallet up and tosses it in my lap. "But a man needs a picture of his best girl, don't he?"

I'm the only picture in his wallet. I have been for as long as I can remember, though it's always my school picture and he changes it out every time I go up a grade. But school pictures hadn't been taken yet when the walkers came, and so the photo my dad has is my year-old fourth-grade picture. That was the first Picture Day I had my ears pierced, and Mom let me wear her favorite diamond earrings and the necklace to match. She made me sign a letter swearing to bring everything back in good shape. The diamonds . . . They're beautiful, even just captured in a picture, but they don't look as good on me as they did on her.

My mother. I can see her in my head, still . . . But how long will that last?

"I lost my picture of Mom. It was in my bag back in the CDC." My voice is small. I meet my dad's eyes, and very quietly – but controlled, I'm not about to cry – I ask, "What if I forget what she looks like?"

For a moment, we just look at each other. We do that a lot, my dad and I, just look and not talk. He and Mom used to do it, too. Now, though, now he's looking at the wallet. He glances back at me, but then his eyes go to the wallet again and this time so does his hand and he picks the wallet up. His fingers go to a slot I don't think I've ever noticed and he pulls out a blank piece of paper I don't think I've ever seen. He hands it to me. "Here."

The paper's thick and folded into fourths. I unfold it and then inhale.

It's the three of us. We're outside somewhere, under a clear sky, on a long stretch of very green grass dotted with dandelions. I'm in the left half of the picture, just a toddler, young enough that I'd let Mom put a bow in my hair, and I'm watching something the photo doesn't show. To the right, on the other side of a quilt I recognize from my Nana's house, my dad sits in one of those metal folding chairs, and he has his arms wrapped around her, around  _Mom_ , she's on his lap, and she's gorgeous _._ Her hair's been hot-iron curled, she's in cut-off jeans I can't remember her ever wearing, and she's grinning and watching me, and she has an arm around Dad's neck, and Dad, he looks happy. They both look so happy. It's weird but I love it.

"When was this?" I ask Dad in an almost-whisper. My hand's trembling, making the picture shake, so I have to rest it on my knee.

"Fourth of July. You'da been a few months shy of two."

"So you were still married?"

"Yep." He snaps his wallet closed. "You keep that. Girl should have a picture of her mom."

I swallow. "Thanks."

He nods once. A moment passes. Then he taps my arm with the back of his hand. "C'mon. Time to head out."

I make myself take my eyes from the picture. "Can I ride with you?" With the truck gone, my dad's going to be riding my uncle's motorcycle from here on out. That makes the whole thing a little better – just a little – because I  _do_ love to ride the motorcycle, can't say otherwise.

But my dad's shaking his head. "No. Long trip, we don't know what we might run into. You're gonna ride in the RV."

I'm disappointed but I don't argue. Never helps, with Dad, and he hates it when I do it. I take in the picture one more time – my  _mom_  – and then carefully fold it back up, right along the older creases. My dad opens the door for me and I hop out, tucking the photo deep into my back pocket. I notice Dad's wearing the vest I love, the leather one with the wings on the back. I also notice that his eyes go over the truck, and that his hand may linger on the handle for a bit too long, but that's as close as he gets to looking sad. My dad, he's real strong. He doesn't make a show of being upset about things. I'm trying to get as good as he is about that.

He slams the door. We step away and Dad's hand runs down the back of my head once, and he tells me to be good. Then he goes off to the motorcycle, waiting and ready, crossbow already hooked on back.

And me, I steal just one second to look around. Carl and his parents, Lori and Rick (our new  _leader_ , I think, and I didn't want to like him at first, but now I think  _maybe_  he might be alright), are riding with Sophia and her mom, Carol, in Carol's Cherokee. Looks like they're all ready to go, Sophia's climbing in right now, clutching that doll Eliza Morales gave to her days ago. Sophia's twelve but doesn't really act her age. My eyes catch on Carl next, and he catches me looking – wait, I'm catching  _him_ looking – and I turn away immediately, pressing my lips together. Carl and I, we were almost-friends early on, but these days we don't get along very well. He doesn't understand me. I don't care.

I check out the RV now. Shane's standing at the end, holding his shotgun, like he always seems to be. Andrea's walking to the door, frowning, as usual. Andrea . . . She wanted to stay behind in the CDC. Not like me, because I didn't _really_ want to stay behind –

I crack my fingers, chew my knuckle. Don't want to think about that. Not even supposed to, my dad said to forget it.

Anyway, Dale and Glenn are by the door, too. Now so's T-Dog. I hear the motorcycle revving up. We're really all ready. Ready to go, ready to leave Atlanta.

I look at the sky and I think of Merle and wonder if he's still somewhere in the city. But if my dad doesn't want to hang around and look for him, I guess the odds must be slim. I wonder if he's dead and then push that thought away because it's just so bad. I'd like for my dad to talk more about Merle and what he thinks about all that, but I'm not gonna press him, not anytime soon. He's got enough on his mind.

I look up at the nursing home behind me. I don't think my dad believes in heaven, which kind of bothers me, but my mom did. My dad's right on a lot of things, but so was my mom, and so I think I'll think that she's right this time, and I imagine now that all of the dead people inside of there, inside of that sad nursing home, are in heaven. What can it hurt to at least imagine?

And finally, I look at my dad's truck, one last time. Dirty and banged up and lonely and part of so much of me. My throat swells, but I scowl and tell myself to  _stop it_ , and I straighten up and turn on my heel and march right up and into the RV, before anyone else. No crying. I've been crying too much lately, and that's got to stop. I'm stopping it.

Besides, there's no reason to cry. We're going to Fort Benning. We're going to Fort Benning, and things are going to be okay there. We're going to be  _safe_  there, and my dad and I are going to find some woods and go hunting and I'll get a new .22 and he'll get a new truck and maybe someday we'll meet up with Merle again and everything's going to be good.

Yeah.


	2. Lake of Cars

T-Dog's not very good at poker. Maybe I should have expected that from someone who drives – drove – a church van.

"Three kings," I say, laying the cards on the bed we're sitting on and using as a table. We're in the back room of the RV, T-Dog and I, just killing time. Wish we had something to bet, I'd be making out like a bandit. Like now – T-Dog looks at his hand, snorts, and slaps the cards down on the cover in a way that lets me know I've got him beat. I check his cards anyway, and the ones spread in a line between us, and he's only got a pair of tens, not impressive.

"Alright, kid," he says, stretching, as I grin but try not to make it mean-looking, "I'm done. There's only so many times I'm willin' to get beat in Texas Hold'em by a little girl."

"I ain't that little." I gather the cards together, ready to shuffle again. I'm good at shuffling. Merle showed me how to do it good a long time ago.

"Who taught you to play like that? Your dad?"

"And my –" I stop then, because I know T-Dog and my uncle didn't get along. Merle used to call him one of the really bad words that my mom told me never, ever to say and that I even only ever heard from my dad – who doesn't exactly shy from bad words – a few times, and always with Merle. "Yeah," I rephrase in a hurry, glancing down, "Dad. We don't have to play poker. We could try somethin' different if – "

There's a long, loud squeak from under us. Everything shifts forward, including me, as the RV slows and comes to stop. That's all that needs to happen for me to drop the cards and high-tail it to the front of the RV, past Andrea and Shane and the guns at the table, to where Dale's at the wheel and Glenn's riding shotgun, and I see what's outside and have to hold back a gasp.

It's like a traffic jam but worse, much worse, because all of the cars are abandoned, I'm almost positive. There's not a soul in sight. A lot of the vehicles aren't even on the road, they're just off in the grass, big metal chunks of road kill. I see some that are flipped over – on their sides or even topside-down – some that are bumped and crashed into each other, and there are so many open car doors and car trunks and windows . . . And right in front of us, in the middle of this wide highway road, is a loading truck, lying on its side like a dead animal.

"What happened?" I whisper. I feel Shane towering over me, seeing just what I'm seeing. Which is something bad.

Nobody answers me. Nobody has an idea, I guess, or at least nobody has an idea past  _The walkers did it._ Glenn, he sighs a long sigh and then looks at his map.

I hear my dad coming and move my eyes away from the truck, to him, riding right up to Dale's window. I don't like him being out there alone, I realize out of nowhere, but I keep my mouth shut, of course. I just lean against the driver's seat as Dale calls down, "See a way through?"

My dad looks behind him and then jerks his head back, signaling for Dale to follow. I check Dale to see if he gets it, and he nods at Dad, so I think he does. My dad drives off behind the RV and shows up on the other side a few seconds later, riding on ahead, really slow. Dale makes the RV go after him.

"Uh . . . maybe we should just go back," says Glenn. He's stretched out the map in front of him. "There's an interstate bypass –"

"We can't spare the fuel," Dale interrupts.

I'm starting to hate fuel.

And so we weave through the cars. My dad leads the way. We drive over clothes and toys and lots and lots of other stuff, just cast around the place like nothing, and we pass so many empty cars . . .

Except some of them aren't empty.

We've only been moving again for a few seconds when my eye catches on a bright blue station wagon and I see a corpse through the open door. Not a walker, just a corpse, and even from this distance, I can tell it's been here a while. I take my eyes off it. I'm so used to walkers that I forgot how real,  _real_ dead bodies look. And I don't really want to remember. They're not  _worse_ than the walkers, but they're different and I don't like it at all.

"Jeez," Glenn breathes a minute later as we come upon a particularly thick span of cars, and I squint my eyes, and out of nowhere I'm remembering this lake my dad and uncle took me to once, where the water looked like it went on and on until it touched the sky. Like it went straight into it. That's what this car jam is doing – going straight into the sky. "Can we  _get_  through here?"

He's barely said that when there's a harsh clanking noise that spooks me a little, then the squealing sound of an engine acting up – nope, giving out. Smoke rises in front of Dale's windshield, blocking out my dad and the lake of cars. The RV stops moving again.

Dale stands up, a bad sort of exasperation on his face. I move out of his way and he goes out the door, opening it hard enough that it smashes into the side of the RV. Shane follows him – shotgun in hand, of course – and then I'm next. Out into the heat once again. Oh, the heat.

"I said it, didn't I say it? A thousand times . . ." Dale's saying as my shoes touch asphalt, as sunlight touches my cheeks. He goes to the RV's front, we all do – Andrea and T-Dog and Glenn have followed us first three out – and the greyish smoke floats up into the air like I saw it do once before, and I don't like that memory so I shove it back down and listen as Dale grumbles, "Dead in the water," and that distracts me, but not in a good way, because it just makes me think that if it meant we could be in the water I would have killed the stupid RV myself. My throat's  _so_  dry . . . and my head hurts, now that I think about it . . . Mom always used to tell me to drink water when I got a headache, because it was probably something called  _dehydration_  –

"Problem, Dale?" Shane's asking pleasantly, surveying the area. I wiggle my head a little, bringing myself back to here and now, and I watch my dad, who's left the motorcycle a little ways off and is coming over to us now.

Dale answers, "Oh, just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of – " Then he looks around, at all of the cars, all with car  _parts_  open for the taking, and I think he was about to say with no hope in fixing the RV, but now he says, "Okay, that was dumb" and in spite of myself my lips twitch a little. I like Dale.

"If you can't find a radiator hose here . . ." Shane says.

"Whole buncha stuff we can find." My dad's at an ugly yellowish car right in front of us. That car's got a weird kind of back and the window of it is open, and my dad's rifling through the inside now.

"Siphon more fuel from these cars, for a start." T-Dog.

I want to go to my dad but decide not to. Don't want to get in his way or nothing.

" _Anything," Sydney,_ Mom would correct. _And remind me to yell at your daddy later. Good and grammatically._

I kick the ground and stick a hand in my pocket, touching the folded-up photo.

"Maybe some water?"

That was Carol, standing just behind Andrea (who's behind me), Sophia under her arm. The others – the two families – have gotten out of the Cherokee and come up to us. When did that happen? I bite the inside of my cheek, as punishment more than anything, because I've got to start paying closer attention or it's gonna be the death of me, and that's not just an expression anymore. But then somebody says something about food, and that sets my mouth off watering – had a handful of  _garbanzo_  beans last night, nothing since – and then Lori's voice breaks into my head with "This is a graveyard."

I go still. I feel the air tense up. Looks are exchanged.  _Graveyard_. Graveyard, I hate that word . . . and I think back to the body I saw earlier . . .

I turn and look up at dad, but he's eyeing Lori over my head, and Lori, she says, "I don't know how I feel about this."

Another pause.

Then it's over. Everyone starts moving again, including my dad, he starts going through the back of that car again. I relax, because that means it's okay that we're here. It means any food and clothes and  _water_ we find is ours if we want it, and that gets me excited. T-Dog goes off to get what he needs to suck –  _siphon_  – out fuel, and Shane calls for us all to look around, gather what we can. I hesitate but then start towards my dad, figuring if I'm helping I can't get in his way too bad.

"Sydney?"

Behind me. Carl's standing there, Sophia next to him, and she's holding that doll, of course. Their moms are close by, edging towards a green car, but Carl's eyes are on me and he asks, "Wanna walk around with us?"

I resist the urge to bite my knuckle. He's just being nice, I know. We're not friends. Carl doesn't really want me there, and I've barely ever spoken with Sophia, but I'm sure she doesn't like me because Carl doesn't like me. Point is, I shouldn't –

"Little Bit."

I look over my shoulder. Dad's done looking through that first car, I think, and T-Dog's by him, passing over one of those big red jugs they carry the fuel in. My dad says, "You can go with them if ya want, but you keep to where I can see ya."

"'Kay."

And now what can I do? My dad just gave me permission to go with Carl and Sophia  _in front of Carl and Sophia._ I can't just say no for the hell of it, can I? Even if they don't really want me to come – and I know they don't – that'd make them feel bad, I think. So, I do the good thing. I swallow a sigh and muster up a weak smile – at least, I think it's a smile – for Sophia and for Carl.  _Carl_. The person I feel more awkward around than anyone else.

Because Carl, he caught me crying two nights ago. Alone on some stairs after I had a fight with my dad. A fight that sort of had a little to do with Carl, actually, but I won't get into that. No. Gotta just leave all of that behind me. Forget the CDC. All of it.

And so I go with them. And really, it's not bad, because we don't talk much. Sophia and Carl and I just follow their moms, and I keep my dad in sight, and we look around. We just . . . look. Explore. I used to like exploring, but it's different now. It's different  _here_. Because Lori was right – this is a graveyard. We go through the cars, and sometimes we see bodies, or smell them, or both, and I keep my face calm, but every time a new body appears, and I hear that familiar sound of buzzing flies, something inside of my belly twitches around and makes me feel a little queasy and I have to turn and check for my dad. But, like I said. Straight face. I don't scare easy.

Before long, I come across a little white car that reminds me of my Nana's. It's empty, and its passenger door is open. The other kids and Lori and Carol are at a black sports car two cars down, so I'm sort of alone. After a second I slide into the white car. The seats are hot. My Nana's car smelled like her perfume, but I don't smell anything in here but what I smelled outside – meaning mainly rot and hot asphalt. I find myself digging through the console – and I know I'm supposed to be looking through luggage, for useful stuff like clothes, but a few lost seconds won't hurt, and my Nana used to always keep granola bars in the console – and that's when someone comes up to the open door. "So, why's your dad call you 'Little Bit?'"

Carl. And  _wha_ t? I give him a half-a-second look and then return to the console, which doesn't seem to have any food but holds some coins and a tiny notebook and pepper spray and lip balm and lots and lots of pens. I pull out a silvery one and tell Carl, "Don't know. He and my unc . . . My dad's done it since I was a baby. Just a nickname."

"My dad doesn't call me anything like that."

He doesn't want to get me started on his dad, not when I'm not completely sure yet if I even like Rick. He's still the man who left Merle. So I stay silent and click the pen a few times before drawing on my hand. It takes a few scribbles, but the ink starts to come out, and it stains a squiggly line on my skin. I pretend it's a tattoo. I've always wanted a tattoo, like my dad, he has tattoos. He used to say he'd take me to get my own the day my mom okayed it, and I asked and asked but of course Mom said no.

It takes a few seconds for Carl to get that I'm not going to answer him (I'm honestly not trying to be mean, there's no sense in that, but how am I supposed to answer?), and he says, "Your dad seems really cool, though."

"Mmhmm." He's not even looking around, Carl. He should be, we're supposed to be, right? I spot something extra shiny at the bottom of the console, and I dump the pen on the floor and reach my hand back into this could-be treasure box.

"What about your mom? Bet she was cool, too."

I shove my hand down, wrap my fingers around something soft and crinkly, and come up with a miniature Snickers bar. "You never had any friends with dead parents, did you?"

I don't really think about that before I say it. I don't think about the effect it will have on either of us, Carl or me, but what it does is drop a weight into my chest and make Carl's mouth open and his eyes get this confused, sorry look that reminds me of both my friend Tyler and my dog Buck and so that makes me feel bad on top of the weight. So I clear my throat and open up my candy bar, and as I do, I say, "I mean . . . just, I don't like talking about my mom. That's all."

"I'm sorry," Carl says, and normally I hate it when people say that to me, but Carl says it differently than most. He says it like it's real. Not like he's a dog begging you not to kick it. I got to admit, I like that. But I just give him a nod and then break off half of the Snickers bar.

"Here."

He takes the candy. And he smiles. He  _smiles_ , and this is so different from the last conversation we had when the RV stranded us –

"Sydney!"

Well, maybe it's not so different after all. Because that's my dad's voice and he doesn't sound happy.

I send a breath out through my teeth and drop my half of the Snickers in the seat before I jump out of the car. My dad's across the highway, looking down the road. I put my hands on top of the car – it's  _hot_ up here– and stand on my tiptoes. "Yeah, Dad?"

His head turns to me, and even from here I can see his face get hard. He moves closer, one of those fuel jugs in his hand. "What'd I say 'bout stayin' where I can see you?"

"I's just sittin' in the car."

"Well, don't. And don't make me tell you again, neither."

I nod. He walks off, and I give Carl a sideways look, and even though I just sort of got into trouble, I can't help it, a smile somehow curls around my lips. "He still seem really cool?"

And guess what?

Carl laughs, his mouth full of chocolate. I actually  _make him laugh_.

And me, I giggle a little, too, and in that second, Carl and I? We could maybe be something like friends.

. . . . .

"Anything good?" asks Sophia a few minutes later as I peer into the bed of some truck, my feet on the bumper.

I scan. Some torn-apart luggage and its torn-apart contents. "Probably not," I say to her and Carl. "But maybe –"

"Lori! Under the cars!"

My head jerks around and I find Rick, rifle in his hands and that hat on his head, and then my eyes move to Lori, to the left of the truck and ducking beside a huge black van, and then I finally look behind me, past the RV and so many cars, and – and they're coming.

_Them._

And there are a lot.


	3. Instinct

Walkers. Lots and lots of them, more than I've ever seen together before. More even than that night of the fish fry when – oh, and I don't even have a knife –

"Kids,  _get down now!_ " Rick hisses.

That snaps me back into the moment. I get down, or I  _jump_  down, I jump down from the bed, losing my balance a bit, my eyes glued to the bobbing heads I can still see even from down here. Rick's gotten on the ground by a vehicle, he's going under it, and Sophia's moving under a different one, a closer one, and she's making high-pitched squeaks, and a hand – Carl's hand – wraps around my wrist and pulls at me but I pull away. I pull away.

Because everything I got is telling me to go find my dad. My dad. I have to – I have to find my dad, I _have to –_

Someone whisper-yells my name, maybe Rick, maybe Carl, maybe both, when I run, but I'm gone like lightning and they're in my dust, them and all the walkers. Yes, I run from the walkers and to my dad, my dad, I want my dad –

_But where the hell is he?_

It goes like this: I dart from car to car, ducking behind the front of one here, the open door of another over there, making my way deeper into the car lake, all alone, keeping my head low. I trip over things and kick them out of my way, my teeth clamped together and my fingernails digging into my palms.

I'd been keeping my dad in sight, I told him I would stay where he could see me, and I _had_ , after the white car, so where is he, how could he disappear that fast, where . . . ?

Before long, I stop by a station wagon, I have to, I have to take a quick,  _very quick_  breather. Too much panic, too fast running. I'm resting on the side of the wagon opposite of the walkers, naturally. I'm brave and so I glance around the station wagon, and I get a stab in my gut that hurts all the way to my toes at what I see. The walkers are catching up – a few at the front, I can see their chests. They move faster than I thought, and like a car wreck I have to watch them for a second, stumbling around the vehicles, finding every space to go through, like water in a creek. Oh, and I can  _hear them._ I pull my head back, and as I lean against the wagon and gasp in air, searching ahead of me, searching the dead traffic jam – one more dumb dead thing – and as I'm trying to make myself  _think_ , those walkers' growls and raspy lungs invade my ears and mind and heart and a dry, tiny whine that I hate escapes my throat.

Gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, and I gotta think fast. My dad, my dad'll have seen the walkers, of course, I'm an idiot for running in the first place, my dad can take care of himself, and I'm not a baby, I should be able to take care of  _myself_ , but the best way to do that would have been to stay with the others, right? Power in numbers? Now I'm out here alone . . . no knife . . . I have to hide . . . under the cars, like Rick said? No, wait – wouldn't the walkers smell me? Oh, God, if that's how it is, Carl and Sophia and the others, are they –

Can't think about that. Gotta think about me. Gotta go. Gotta survive. They're coming. I hear them. Gotta –

Just as my muscles are tensing I see something move out of the corner of my eye, over to my left, and I drop myself down, almost falling, my heart about to rip itself from my chest. But, no, it's not a walker. It's T-Dog. It's T-Dog, about ten feet away, and his nice striped shirt is covered in blood. I watch with big eyes as he stumbles out of sight, behind a huge blue truck . . .

And I don't think about it, really. I just dive to the ground and scramble to him, because he's a grownup, and even if he's hurt, he's gotta know what to do. I'm smart, but I'm just a kid. Grownups, grownups know what to do . . .

I pull myself underneath the blue truck and crawl, scraping my bare elbows as I do, and I come up on the other side, and I see him, he's lying down, and oh, God. That's a lot of blood. That's a lot of blood on that nice striped shirt, and I can tell right away from the shocked, almost frozen face of T-Dog that he is in no position to know what to do, and I'm back where I was five seconds ago only now I have a bloody man with me.

He's found himself – and now I have, too – in this little section blocked off by three cars, one of them on its side and showing all of the mechanical stuff underneath it, but that one's to my right, and T-Dog's in front of me, up against the tire of this dark-colored car. And he's not alone, he's not alone, there are bodies lying around here, I think four, but I don't stop to count, I just pretend the corpses aren't there and – still on all fours – I go to T-Dog and touch his shoulder, and through all the shock on his face I see fear, serious fear . . . It's his arm, his right arm is sliced open, and how did it happen? It's deep, and –  _blood_ – can't walkers smell blood?

"Sydney," T-Dog chokes, and I look up at him, but he's looking behind me, and I hear it before I even turn.

The shuffling. The moaning. Like how that scary Grim Reaper would sound –

I whip my head around and there's one coming for us, right into this little area, and it used to be a man and it's wearing torn-up overalls and it's  _coming to kill us._

My dad says people have instincts, just like animals do. The same thing that makes a doe take care of her fawn or tells a squirrel to hide acorns causes people to do things without thinking about it, things that help them survive. Instinct.  _Instinct_  is what's happening to me now, as my body shrinks back against T-Dog like he's a magnet and I'm metal.  _Instinct_  is why my hand decides to go for my knife – but I don't have it, it's blown to bits miles away, so now  _instinct_  makes me check T-Dog for a weapon, some weapon. I don't see one, so  _instinct_  moves my eyes around, but there's nothing in arm's reach that's sharp enough. And  _instinct_  – I'm not proud of this –  _instinct_  says to run, bolt, flee, leave, but there's nowhere to go. I'm cornered.

And instinct, instinct has now done all it can, and instinct leaves me behind and the only choice I have is to die.

The walker's steps away. His eyes – his frozen, cold,  _wrong_  eyes – they're on T-Dog's arm, focused in like lasers, but I know he'll tear into me just as fast, and others will swarm around, and me, I'm gonna get ripped apart or turned into  _one of them_ – just like Dr. Jenner warned would happen – an  _agonizing death_ , he said -

There's a blur from behind the walker, and something clattering onto the hood of the car in front of us – a crossbow.

Now the geek's got an arm around its neck, and the geek is twitching, it's twitching and spitting blood and choking, and of course the arm belongs to my dad.

Dad and the walker topple to the ground and the walker stops moving, stops doing anything, and with an angry grunt my dad pulls his knife from the back of the thing's head. His face is even dirtier than it was when I saw him last, but it's not like I care, he's the best thing I've ever seen, my dad. I'm breathing hard, my mouth feels like cotton, and I want to just jump to Dad and hug him with everything I got and let him promise me that things are okay, but of course now's not the time and so I only give him a little nod to tell him I'm alright. Dad's eyes go to T-Dog, take in the cut, all the blood, and then those blue eyes – hunter's eyes, like mine – they come back to me. Dad presses a finger to his lips.  _"Shh."_

He's said that to me a million times before but it's so much different now. We're not hunting, we're . . . we're being hunted? No, walkers don't hunt, that takes too much skill, walkers just find something on accident and then rip it apart –

I press my fingers into the dirty asphalt to try and stop myself from shaking. But the sounds of the walkers are loud, they're right on top of us, they'll be here any second, ripping –

My dad's standing, he's grabbing T-Dog's legs, and Dad's here, it's okay, it's okay. I cringe as he drags T-Dog across the ground, though, because T-Dog makes these muffled whimpering sounds that have to mean it hurts him, but I cringe even more when my dad stops and hauls the walker he just killed on top of T-Dog. Then Dad moves over beside me, crouching low, and I stand but crouch low, too. Dad grips the open door of the car I'm against and pushes it open wider. There's a body inside, half-decayed and horrible, and I take a little step back. "Sydney, lie down," Dad mutters. His hands go for the corpse.

I look from him to the body and over to T-Dog under the dead walker, and things click, and I can't help it, I say, "Dad,  _no – "_

And he snaps his fingers and points at the ground, and the expression on his face tells me he's not asking, and so I lower myself down, I have to, and my eyes go back to the unmoving form of T-Dog again, and to the thing on top of him, and then there's this awful crunching sound and my dad's on the ground beside me and there's a body on top of us, a terrible, rotting dead body, and even though most of it is on my dad it still feels really heavy on me and it  _smells horrible_. I turn my head and gag and then somehow a whimper slips up from my throat, like the whine did before, and my dad's arm snakes under my back and he clamps a hand over my mouth. " _Hush,_ " he breathes sharply, his head against mine.

And then the walkers are here, barely a second after we're under the dead man.

They move right over us, shambling past, bumping into the cars and the corpses and coming close enough to touch, and I've never been this close to one of them. The sounds they make, the snarling . . . They sound like animals. Really vicious animals, and I guess maybe that's all they are. I shut my eyes. I don't want to see them. Ever again. My dad's perfectly still beside me, his hand still over my mouth. The corpse on us makes me understand the term  _dead weight_  and I start holding my breath to be quiet and so I won't have to smell it.

It feels like we stay like that a really long time – my lungs start to burn – but I guess it can't be longer than a minute or so. It's long enough, though, plenty long enough. The walkers eventually fade out, stop crossing by us, move on to wherever, wherever walkers move on to. The moans, the dragging steps, the crackling in-and-out of the air they don't need, all of that fades away, but my dad keeps us on the ground even for a while after I can't hear a thing, and I know he's just keeping us safe, but a bad part of me wants to be mad at him.

Then, finally, just when my lungs are about to explode, Dad heaves the body off of us and I feel relief like I never have before. The corpse lands on the other side of me with a crumpling sound. I scramble away from it, coughing and gulping in air, and I back into my dad, who yanks me around to face him. "You okay?  _Sydney!_ You okay?"

And I swallow and say, "Yeah," and that's enough for him, I guess, because he turns away and moves over to T-Dog, shoving the body off of him. I see him move, T-Dog, and as Dad helps him sit up he makes gurgling noises. He's still alive. But those gurgling noises aren't good, and all that blood, and I don't know –

I focus on making myself stand. My legs wobble. My breath's uneven, and I hate that, and I feel really sick to my stomach and T-Dog's still gurgling. I glance at the corpse my dad put on us but then look away from it. My mind goes back to the CDC, to Dr. Jenner, to Jacqui, to a clock-ticking down and an offer –

No!  _N_ o _,_ damn it – no,  _goddamn_ it, and that's one of the words that my mom would be mad at me for using, but my mom's  _dead_ , and I'm alive, and she wanted me to be alive, and I've got to want it, too . . . And I told my dad that I did. . .

I look at him, my dad, struggling to get T-Dog on his feet, and I feel a dripping sort of misery inside of me, and in my head I tell him I'm sorry, and I promise I won't think about it again, I'll forget the CDC, I'll forget all of it.

Dad's just got T-Dog to a very unsteady stand when there's a scream. A small, little scream, like from just a kid, a girl, and I look towards that scream and all I can think is  _Sophia._


	4. Waiting

Sophia ran off into the woods on the side of the highway after two walkers started in on her. Apparently she tried to get out from under her hiding car too soon and they spotted her and started chasing her. Rick followed them all into the woods. This is what my dad and T-Dog and I are told when we reach the RV a few minutes after we hear the scream.

Then it's waiting.

We all hang around by the guardrail for a long, long time. Even T-Dog, after Dale patches him up. My dad stands on the hood of a car, keeping watch, and Shane stands on the top of another. Glenn leans on a different car altogether. Dale and T-Dog are by the guardrail, Dale watching off of it (for Rick and Sophia and walkers) and T-Dog just resting there. Andrea is by the car my dad is on. Carl and I are by the car Shane is on. Lori is sitting on the hood of that same car, and she is rubbing the back of Carol, who switches between standing and leaning, crying and not. With or without tears, her face makes me hurt and so I don't look at her much at all. I keep my eyes on my feet, mostly.

I hate waiting.

. . . . .

Rick comes back and he doesn't have Sophia.

_He doesn't have Sophia._

He left her. He found her and then he left her in a nook on the river, that's what he says. He told her to run back here when she got the chance, he told her how to get here and everything. But has he ever  _met_ Sophia? The twelve-year-old who still carries a doll? The girl who once begged me not to kill a rabbit because it wasn't hurting anybody? How would she know what to do in the woods? How would she know how to get away from walkers? Did she even have a weapon? Anything?

_He left her._

And when Carol hears this she falls on her knees and I get angry and I  _definitely_ don't like Rick but I have to keep it all inside and I hate that.

My dad goes back into the woods with him, with Rick. Shane and Glenn go, too, but my dad's the best one to take, the most useful, and it makes me calm down a little that he goes. I mean, I hate that he's not here. Hate it. But he's a great tracker, the best, it runs in the family, and he'll find Sophia. He'll find her, and she'll be fine.

There's waiting again.

An hour after they leave, Shane and Glenn come back. My dad and Rick are still out there, still looking. Shane tells us my dad picked up the trail. Of course he did. He'll find Sophia easy, if she's still –

Stop. That's a bad thought.

And then there's waiting.

. . . . .

Dale and I stand by the front of the RV and watch – well, Dale sort of directs – as Shane drives this old tan car into a big red one. Andrea stands outside of the red car but jogs with it when it starts to move, her hand on its steering wheel, and she makes it roll safely off the highway, down a small slope and into another car.

As Shane backs the tan car away, Dale turns to the RV again. He's working on fixing it. He's got some little door open and I can see inside of the RV. The bolts and screws and pipey-things are old and rusty and I think it's time for a new RV, but I guess that's not really an option. "Can you fix it?"

Dale's fingers reach into the opening, touch something, fiddle around. "Oh, sure. It'll just take a little time, is all."

"You a mechanic?"

Jim was a mechanic.

Dale shakes his head. "No, no, but this thing has been giving out on me for years . . ." he looks down at me, smiling. It makes me relax a bit, that smile. Dale reminds me of my Papaw, have I mentioned that? "I remember one time, my wife and I were taking a trip to Nevada, and right in the middle of the Interstate –"

"Why aren't we all out there lookin'? Why're we movin' cars?"

Dale stops and looks above me and I look over my shoulder. Carol's come over here. She's hugging herself and talking to Dale.

"Well, we have to clear enough room so I can get the RV turned around as soon as it's running," Dale explains. "Now that we have fuel we can double back to a bypass that Glenn flagged on the map."

"Goin' back's gonna be easier than trying to get through this mess." That's Shane. He and his shotgun have appeared behind Carol. Almost at the same time, Lori and Carl arrive at the RV, both with their hands full of newfound supplies. I catch Carl's eye and remember the Snickers from earlier. I suddenly wish we'd given some to Sophia.

Carol's forehead's wrinkling up. "We're not going anywhere till my daughter gets back," her wobbly voice says.

"Hey." Lori leaves her findings in a little pile we've started and comes over to Carol, touches her arm. "That goes without saying."

"Look, Rick and Daryl – they're on it, okay?" Shane tells Carol, gently. "Just a matter of time."

"Can't be soon enough for me." Andrea. She and Glenn have reappeared from somewhere in the car lake, and Andrea has a water bottle. I already got some earlier – it was like going swimming on the hottest day of the year, but in my throat and head – and I kind of want more now. But instead of seeking out water, my eyes follow Carol as she turns her back to the rest of us and goes back to her spot by the guardrail. I think it's the spot Sophia ran from. Andrea and Shane say something about a herd but I don't really listen. Watching Carol stand all alone like that makes me want to gnaw my knuckle. Doesn't she know? Doesn't she understand that this is  _my dad_ we're talking about?

My feet move before my mind gives them the okay, and then I'm sort of trapped in doing it. I leave the others and their discussion of herds and attacks and go over to Carol. It's quieter over here. I stand beside her and look out into the woods. There's a hill covered in brush that leads down to where the forest starts. The forest, it's thick and shadowy on the inside. The best kind, if you ask me.

Carol's hands are together, her fingers twisting around one another, pulling and releasing. I know this . . . Yeah, it's called  _wringing._ Wringing your hands. Mom made fun of Nana for doing it. Nana did it a lot, actually, when she was nervous. And Carol, Carol's definitely nervous. Definitely scared.

I look up at her. I don't talk to her much, but now's as good a time as any. Maybe. "No point in worryin'."

She glances at me. I don't think she realized I was here. Her gaze moves back up, back to the dark woods, just as fast. "Well, sometimes you can't help it."

"I know," I say. God, I'm not good with words. Mom, Mom was. "But I just mean, my dad . . ." And how do I describe it? How do I make her get it? I'm not sure you  _can_  get it, not unless you see him in action, my dad. "He's a really good tracker," I settle on, which is weak. "I mean, the best. Maybe ever." Well, him or Merle, anyway. And someday I'll give them both a run for their money, but that's not important right now, and I keep my eyes on Carol, because Mom always said eye contact is important for making people believe you. "Sophia's gonna be just fine."

And I believe it, I do.

And Carol, Carol manages to give me a smile, and it's hard for her to do, I can tell, but at least it's a smile. And at least I tried. She can believe me or not. Either way, my dad'll bring back Sophia and Carol will see for herself.

I've done what I can. I walk away.

. . . . .

"Look."

Carl says this to me from his perch on the edge of a dusty red truck, a place that gives him a view through a dirty window into the cab. I step back from the on-its-side blue motorcycle I'm examining and go over to him. He jumps down and I jump up and I look.

Another body. Great.

I don't flinch. I look down at Carl, who's standing on his tiptoes below me, still peering in. "What about it?"

"Under its arm. You see it?" His voice is excited.

I look again, my eyes avoiding the decaying head, the wide-open mouth with the crazy teeth, and I do see it. Under the arm, like Carl said. Something flat and black, but with a silver line on its edge, its curved-out edge.

I squint. "What is that, an axe? Or . . . a hatchet?"

"Only one way to find out." He heads around the truck, walking with a purpose. I watch him for a moment, taken aback, before dropping down and following him.

"You kiddin' me? You ever even touched a body before?"

We reach the other side of the truck, the driver's side, and Carl pauses, eyes on the window, on the outline of the dead man's dead head. He looks uncertain for a second, but then he says to me, "If that's a hatchet, we need it."

"We got other weapons."

His eyes meet mine, and I know right away I hate that look. "What, are you scared?" he asks, and in spite of everything, in spite of the corpse and Sophia and all, the corners of his mouth are almost curling up, I can see it, and I narrow my eyes. Scared? He thinks  _I'm_ scared?

"I had one of those –" I check behind me, and there are no adults close, the only ones I see are Dale and Glenn by the RV and Carol by the guardrail, and so I turn back around. "I had one of those  _damn_ things on top of me a few hours ago, city boy," I snarl at him in a low voice, ignoring the fact that most of my time before the walkers was spent with my mom and we lived in a nice neighborhood where people mowed their lawns and had swimming pools in their backyards. That's not me these days. "I ain't scared of one more."

Carl's head tilts from me to the body and back. There's a question in his expression. A request. I raise my eyebrows. That changed around fast. "What, you want  _me_  to do it?"

"You just said you're not scared."

"And what, you are?" I cross my arms. "Need me to do your dirty work?"

We stare at each other for a while.

Finally, Carl sighs. He gestures at the handle. "Alright . . . Why don't we do it together? On three?"

I could do it alone. I could do it alone just fine. But, I mean, Carl's the one who wants the hatchet-axe thing so bad. And if he doesn't want to get it by himself, it's only nice that I help him. So I nod.

"One . . ." he begins. "Two . . ."

Both of our hands find the handle. Our fingers tighten around it, carefully, not enough to pull it, not yet. We watch each other.

"Three!"

The handle resists but gives. The door squeaks as it swings open. The body's arm slips from its lap and dangles from the torso while Carl and I stand there, taking the image and the stench of the dead man in. My body wants to shiver and I tell it hell no. If I handled hiding under a corpse, I can absolutely handle this. Even if my dad's not here.

The hatchet – and it is a hatchet, I'm sure now – the hatchet is right there. Well, sort of. It's under the arm not dangling, the arm farthest from us.

Carl and I don't say anything for a bit. He breathes out through an O-shaped mouth.

"You wanted it," I eventually say, because isn't it true?

"I thought you weren't scared?"

See? This is why he and I are not friends. Not really. "I thought you weren't, either? I already helped you open the door." I nod at the hatchet, at the body. "You want it, you get it."

He grimaces. I wait. He doesn't move for a minute, but then he does. One minute he's still, the next he's pressing up against the dead man's car seat, and I gotta admit, I'm surprised.

Carl reaches his arm across the corpse's lap, touching onto the hatchet. Then his other hand goes up to help. I check for adults, but we're still pretty alone. "It's not just a hatchet," Carl tells me, his voice strained by the pulling. "It's a whole bundle."

"Of what? Weapons?"

He yanks and yanks but this bundle of his doesn't come out. He lets go and steps back. I bite my lip, look at the body, and then say, "Let me try," because if it's a whole bundle of weapons, I know it's worth getting, and it's not a big deal, it's just a body . . .

But by the time I've made my offer, Carl's climbing up beside the seat. Now I'm  _really_  surprised.

And . . . just a little impressed.

"Ew." He bends over the corpse. "It smells so bad."

He has no idea. I don't tell him this, though, because like I said, the kid's showing more spine than I've ever given him credit for, and I don't want to spoil that.

Carl grabs the bundle and tugs, tugs, tugs.

"Why won't it come out?" I ask.

"It's just hooked –  _whoa!_ "

He tumbles out, his sentence ended with his own high-pitched yell and a cracking noise from the corpse, and as Carl hits asphalt and I squat down to him, the body leans out over us, kept from falling out only by the seat belt it's still trapped under.

"You okay?" I ask as Carl sits up, panting. He has the bundle in his hands, this black leather thing about half his height. He nods at me and feels the bundle. A grin breaks out over his face. "It's an  _arsenal_."

. . . . .

Carl and I show the weapons to Shane and he tells us – kind of harshly, actually, but I don't know why – to give them to Dale, so we do. My dad and Rick still aren't back yet, and I'm not worried, but I just wish they would hurry up and bring Sophia back.

We keep looking around – scavenging, Glenn calls it once. Yeah, we scavenge. Lori, she finds some clothes she thinks will fit me – four shirts, two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, some socks and underwear, and everything seems clean. I immediately change, since I swear I can smell death on my old clothes. The jeans I choose from my new stash are a little long, but that can be fixed by just rolling them up, and the shirt is a green tank top that's kind of loose but looks like something my mother would wear on a weekend, so I like it.

Before I leave the RV's bathroom I dig out my mom's picture from my old jeans. I tuck all of my clothes under one of the beds in the back room and then go outside, head straight to my uncle's – my dad's? – motorcycle, where I tuck the picture into one of the bags on the side of it. I hate not having the photo on me, but it's too easy to lose and I can't risk it. That would be awful.

The sun sinks. The day gets dim. My dad and Rick don't get back, and I can't help thinking about the day of the fish fry, when my dad and Rick and Glenn and T-Dog went into the city to find Merle and some guns Rick had accidentally left behind. I waited for them to get back all day, long after they were supposed to have returned, and then it got dark and late and they showed up just as walkers were killing half of our people . . .

That won't happen this time. They'll get back, and they'll have Sophia, and things will be good. Things will be fine.

Less and less light. The sky in the west turns orange, the sky in the east goes blue. My stomach hurts. No reason, though, no reason at all. I've even eaten some jerky Shane passed around earlier, so I'm not even hungry. And nervous? No reason to be nervous. My dad, my dad can take care of himself. And Rick. And Sophia.

I keep busy. Like I said earlier, we're pooling supplies together, and I set myself to organizing out the food we find. Cans over here, dried fruits over there, that kind of thing. I even start sorting by expiration date after a while. At one point, Shane comes up behind me with a huge jug of water and he gives me a smile. "That's good, Sydney," he says. He's not harsh, like before. I like Shane.

Dale and Andrea start arguing behind me – Dale has Andrea's gun, I think, and he won't give it back? – and Shane goes over to break that up, says something about not having so many guns "floating around camp," and I'm in the middle of thinking that my dad ain't gonna give up his gun no matter how Shane feels about it when I hear Glenn say, "Oh, God – they're back."

I drop a jar of peanut butter and bolt to the guardrail. Glenn's right. They're coming up the hill right now, Rick in his dirty white shirt and my dad with his crossbow and –

And that's it.

No Sophia.

I stop short just behind Carol. What?  _What?_ But my dad – my  _dad_  –

A strange breathy sound that's sort of like a sigh but different comes from Carol, and then, when my dad and Rick get close enough, "You didn't find her?"

Rick climbs over the guardrail. "Her trail went cold. We'll pick it up again at first light."

I hear others gathering behind me but I don't turn. I look at my dad, who's not looking at me, and I don't understand. Has my dad ever lost a trail before? Ever?

_Sophia_.

"You can't leave my daughter out there on her own, to spend the night alone in the woods . . ." Carol's close to crying again. Again. But she has a right to cry, I know . . .

"Out in the dark's no good," my dad tells her, and he's using his special gentle voice, and for a moment – just one moment – I feel a spike of jealousy because that's supposed to be his voice for  _me_ , that's why it's  _special_. But then I feel ashamed. "We'd just be tripping over ourselves. More people'd get lost –"

"But she's twelve! She can't be out there on her own!"

Being twelve has nothing to do with it. Being a girl like Sophia does. I feel sick.

Carol faces Rick, her face changing, crumpling together, and sobs are seconds away. "You didn't find  _anything_?"

"I know this is hard," Rick says, holding his hands up in a  _calm down_  sort of way, "But I'm asking you not to panic. We know she was out there."

"And we tracked her for a while," Dad adds.

Carol's breathing hard, shakily. All of her is shaking, actually.

"We have to make this an organized effort," says Rick, loudly, and I look behind me and all of the group is here. Lori's doing her best to comfort Carl. Carl's mouth is open. The look on his face . . . I don't think he ever considered that they wouldn't find Sophia.

But then again, neither did I . . .

Roll with the punches. Roll with the punches. Be tough. What's Rick saying?

"Daryl knows the woods better than anybody."

True. Very true.

"I've asked him to oversee this."

"Is – is that blood?" Carol's asking. She's pointing at my dad's leg. And yes, there's blood. Why is there blood on my dad's leg?

Rick and Dad exchange looks, and Rick seems lost for a moment, but then he nods. "We took down a walker."

"A walker – oh my God –"

"There was no sign it was ever anywhere near Sophia."

I want to get away from all of these people and go somewhere with my dad and talk to him. I want his hand on my shoulder and I want him to tell me I'm fine and –

Andrea's asking Rick how he can be sure, be sure that the walker wasn't around Sophia, that the walker didn't –

But it's my dad who answers. "We cut the son'bitch open. Made sure."

I think of all of the deer, the rabbits, the squirrels I've seen my dad gut.  _Helped_ him gut. Now I try to take all those scenes, all the blood and the gore, and make a human – no, a  _walker_ , there's a big difference – fit into the picture. I can't. I don't want to. I don't look at the blood on my dad's leg anymore.

Carol. Poor Carol. She sits down on the guardrail. She's pale, I can tell that even in the dusky light. I hate this. My dad's still behind the guardrail. I want him by me, now.

Lori's sitting beside Carol. Carol, she's talking to Rick. Oh, she's – she's mad. "How could you just leave her out there to begin with? How could you just leave her?"

Handcuffs flash through my mind and it happens – my temper flares up and I'm mad again, just like that, it flares up and makes my fists form, and I glare at Rick and will Carol on.

"Those two walkers were on us," says Rick. He sounds tired. Anxious. I don't care. "I had to draw them off. It was her best chance."

Shane passes me and stands beside Rick. "Sounds like he didn't have a choice, Carol."

"How was she supposed to find her way back on her own?" Carol gasps.

Look at the sun. Remember landmarks. Trace your footsteps. But Sophia, she doesn't know that, any of that, but I guess that didn't matter to Rick.

"She's just a child . . .  _she's just a child_. . ."

Rick crouches beside her, wiping a hand over his mouth. "It – it was my only option. The only choice I could make," he tells Carol, and he sounds earnest. Real. Regretful . . .

But he left her and that was  _wrong_ , it was  _wrong!_

Shane tells him nobody doubts him. Shane is wrong, too. You don't leave people. You don't –

I was going to leave T-Dog. Earlier today. Instinct told me to.

My stomach caves in and it hits me that I'm no better than Rick is.

"My little girl got left in the woods." Tears are streaming down Carol's face now.

Rick doesn't reply. Then he bobs his head up and down, fast. Then he stands. He looks around at all of us, and then all at once, he starts walking away, Andrea sits on the other side of Carol, and my dad steps over the guardrail. He moves past me without a word, but his hand lands on my shoulder as he goes by. I want to chase after him so bad, but I know my dad. He wants time alone right now.

I don't look at Carl again for the rest of the night. Because his friend is lost. Because his dad left her and that's bad and I might be just as bad. Because my dad couldn't – he hasn't found Sophia yet. Because Carl and I aren't friends. Because it should have been me and not Sophia, if life were fair, because I would know what to do with myself. Because I hated that look Carl had on his face before and I don't want to see it again.


	5. Compare and Contrast

No time is wasted the next morning. Dad shakes me awake and I roll out of the RV's passenger seat, and fifteen minutes later I'm standing outside, munching on a granola bar. Every grownup is here and ready and – thanks to the weapons Carl and me found – armed in some way. My dad's going to lead them up the creek a ways (I think he said five miles?) then bring them back down on the creek's other side. Combing, that's the word for it, the word for searching really hard for something. At first I think it's just the grownups going and that's the end of it, but then I overhear Carl's parents saying  _he_  can come, and so of course I have to ask my dad if I can go, because Carl going and me not going? No way.

I find him standing by the bed of a blue Dodge, messing with his crossbow. "Dad?" I say, jumping up onto the truck's bumper and hooking my hands onto the folded-up tailgate. "Can I go with y'all today? Carl's goin'," I add quickly.

Dad eyes Carl then me. "If Carl jumped off a bridge . . ."

"Dad," I say, trying not to roll my eyes, ending up just tilting my head to the side like Mom would do when my dad said something she thought was silly. "I know the woods better'n him. And I wanna help. And you don't want my trackin' skills to get rusty," I point out, thinking of that at the last minute.

"Lawyer's daughter . . ." Dad mutters, looking off into the distance with his lips tight. I wait, tapping my fingers, until he finally turns his attention back to me and gives me a single nod. "Alright. But you stay close to me."

I start to smile, but then remember this isn't a happy kind of hunt, and so I just promise him that I'll keep close.

"I'm doing this for you."

That's not my dad or me. That's Dale. I crane – that's a good word,  _crane_  – I crane my head over to the RV, where Dale is standing, his back to me and Dad and everyone. He's facing Andrea. Andrea's face I can see. She was mad earlier because Shane doesn't want anyone but him and Dad and Rick to have guns when they – we – go out today, and she still looks mad, and I hear the mad in her voice as she says, "No, Dale, you're doing this for you. You need to stop. What do you think's gonna happen? I'm gonna stick it in my mouth and pull the trigger the moment you hand it to me?"

Back at the CDC, Dr. Jenner showed us an image of someone's brain. This someone had been bitten and we watched the playback of the brain being overtaken by blackness and shutting down, then coming back to life – just a little, just enough – and then we watched a bullet go through the brain and make everything go black again. I didn't like watching that, but I'm watching it again now, in my head. And then for a split second I'm seeing my mother and her pistol and so I grasp at a different thought and now I'm seeing Andrea staying behind in the computer room, and that's not a lot better, and then I'm reliving my dad and I standing beside that closed steel door with his hands on my arms as a clock ticks down somewhere else, and no, no better, and –

Stupid thoughts.

I drop down from the truck's bumper. My shoes make a loud slap against the road and a little pain shoots up through my heels. I don't mind. Real pain, pain in the body, it can help sometimes with the pain inside your heart and head.

"I know you're angry at me. That much is clear," Dale is saying. "But if I hadn't done what I did, you'd be dead now."

. . . . .

_My dad, his head rotates to me and he gives me that strange look from before, only worse. Then he throws the axe down, and it hits the floor so hard that I jump and then take a step back when I see that my dad's coming towards me, but he's fast and before I know it he's stooped down and taken ahold of my arms._

. . . . .

My dad is standing right beside me now. He can hear all of this, too, all of what Dale and Andrea are saying, because they're not exactly keeping it down. I wonder what he's thinking about. I wonder if it's the CDC, if it's the same scene that's playing in my head. And I wonder how he remembers what happened on that day I'm supposed to forget about.

"Jenner gave us an option," says Andrea. "I chose to stay."

"You chose suicide!"

Suicide, suicide. I see that bullet going through the brain, I see my mother packing my bag, I see a man in a ball cap lying against a tree, I see an explosion like a giant campfire –

"So what's that to you? You barely know me!"

"I know Amy's death devastated you!"

. . . . .

_"Your mom's gone, and I'm sorry. Your uncle's gone, hell,_ everybody _you and me ever knew 'fore all of this is gone, and baby girl, I'm_ sorry _._ _"_

. . . . .

"Keep her out of this!"

But isn't that what it's about? Amy being dead? Isn't that why Andrea wanted to die, why she wanted to stay with Dr. Jenner and Jacqui? I wonder if it was just because she missed Amy, or if maybe she thought she could see her again. Maybe Andrea believes in heaven. Like my mom did.

Andrea's saying this is not about Amy, this is about her and Dale. "And if I decided I had nothing left to live for," she says, her voice rising and breaking at the same time, "Who the hell are you to tell me otherwise? To force my hand like that?"

. . . . .

" _Hey._ Hey! _You love me?"_

_That's a stupid question, and my dad ain't stupid. "Y-Yeah . . ."_

. . . . .

And now I shake my head really hard and walk away, I walk away from my dad and the Dodge and the RV and Dale and Andrea and Rick and Carl and everyone and all of that conversation. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to think about it.

I want to forget the CDC. So much.

And it wasn't like that. It  _wasn't._ Dad and me – Dale and Andrea – it's different, it's so different. Because I didn't want to die. I swear, I didn't want to die, my dad didn't have to talk me out of anything because I  _didn't want to die_  –

I don't go far, just past Carol and a little farther into the lake of cars, just deep enough that I can't hear Andrea and Dale anymore. I find a two-door with an open drivers' side and sit sideways, my feet dangling out. I'll just wait. I'll just wait.

I didn't realize my dad followed me, but I guess I should have expected it. I keep my gaze on my feet as he lowers himself to my eye-level. I was wrong, I  _can_  hear Andrea, and I can't make out what she's saying, exactly, but her voice is powerful and weak all at once and I believe that a part of her is broken, broken on the inside, and I know how she feels and I'm sorry.

"We need to talk?" my dad asks, and I love him then, because he's using his special gentle voice and that makes me feel better, it always does, no matter what.

But I shake my head. My dad's my best friend, really. But there are still some things I can't talk to him about. And right now, the CDC is one of them. "I just wanna look for Sophia."

Dad doesn't like that, I can see it. But he nods anyway. I'm grateful.


	6. If It Were Me

For hours we walk through the woods in a line, my dad at the front and me right behind him, everyone else coming after us (except for Dale and T-Dog, who stayed at the RV). Dad doesn't talk to me much, not the way he does when it's just me and him – when he tells me all about tracking and hunting and which plants can be used for what and all of the millions of other things my dad knows – but that's alright. I can still watch him. Watch and learn, watch and learn.

The forest is dense and leafy, the trees and plants tangling up and running together like one giant shrub. The brush is really heavy in some places along the ground, but I don't have trouble walking. I'm good in the woods, have had lots of practice. There are bugs, though, lots of bugs, and I'm extra hot, I guess because we're moving pretty fast. My dad, he expects people to keep up.

How long have we been in the woods when we come across the tent? Two hours? Three? I'm not sure. But it just pops up, this yellow spot in a world of green, and my dad holds out a hand to Rick while lowering down. I lower, too, and so do Rick and the others, all except for Shane, who says, "She could be in there."

"Could be a whole buncha things in there," my dad replies. He starts forward, pressing his whole hand into my shoulder as he does, and I know he means for me to stay put. He lifts his crossbow, walking the way he does when he's close to an animal. To prey. Rick and Shane follow him. I fold my knees under me and watch as the three of them approach the tent. The tent that could hold a whole buncha things, a whole buncha bad things . . .

It isn't very far away from me, the tent, but the trees are thick enough that I can't tell exactly what Dad and Rick and Shane do when they reach it, and I don't like that. But I can still see well enough to know that my dad goes right up to the thing while Rick and Shane hang back, and I  _really_ don't like that.

Then, "Carol!"

That's Rick, talking in a whisper. Carol's fast little footsteps carry her by me and over to him, and when Lori passes me, too, I figure we're all going and so it's okay to follow the women over to Rick and Shane. And I'm right, the others follow. As Rick leads Carol just a little closer to the tent, I look around the pair and see my dad standing at the tent's entrance, which is zipped up all except for just a tiny piece on the edge, so I can't tell what's in it. I don't know if my dad knows, either, but he's got his best hunting knife out and he's crouched and ready to use it. Why is it him? Why does  _he_  have to go in?

"Call out softly," Rick tells Carol, "If she's in there, yours is the first voice she should hear."

So Carol calls her daughter's name, in a voice all soft and loving. Motherly. "Sweetie? Are you in there?"

The tent doesn't move. Nothing happens.

"Sophia, it's Mommy . . .  _Sophia_." Carol bends down a little, her voice getting higher. More desperate. "We're all here, baby . . . It's Mommy . . ."

Nothing.

Rick moves forward then, signaling for Carol and the rest of us to stay back. Shane goes, too, and as they near the tent my dad starts unzipping the flap, slowly, slowly, his knife still prepared to strike. Finally, when the zipper's gone far enough, Dad pushes the flap back, and over his head I catch a glimpse of the back of a folding chair with what can only be the top of a head peeking over it. My dad coughs out of nowhere, a quick hack of a cough, and Rick's arm comes up to cover his own mouth. That? That tells me right then what's the state of the person the head belongs to. Nervousness creeps up inside of me, and I touch the knife at my waist, the new one my dad chose for me from the arsenal. But I don't think the nervousness is from fear of danger, it's from fear that the smell is coming from –

But no. She disappeared yesterday. That's not enough time for a body to rot that bad, is it?

My dad's going inside the tent. I put a finger to my teeth.

Shane and Rick are both coughing now. And yes, I can smell it too, not as much as they can, I'm sure, and I've smelled worse, but God, I hate that smell.

Lori comes up beside Carol, puts a hand on her. Carl is next to me. I kind of wish I knew what he was thinking but now's not the time to talk.

"Daryl?" Carol calls. "Daryl?"

I keep my eyes on the flap. A few more seconds pass, and then that flap's shoved back and my dad reappears. "Ain't her."

Carol's body loosens, I can see her droop, but in a good way. Me, I  _feel_  myself loosen. Sophia's still out there. She's still alive, of course she is. Carl lets out a breath.

"What's in there?" Andrea asks.

"Some guy," Dad slides his knife back into its sheath. "Did what Jenner said – opted out." He slings his crossbow over his back. "Ain't that what he called it?"

And I frown. I frown, because there's something off about his voice. Something . . . flat? Cool? He didn't look at me when he got out. He hasn't looked at me yet, he didn't look at me while he saying all of that, not straight on. That's . . . That's weird.

Then there's a ringing and I'm not thinking about my dad anymore. It's not a flat, ongoing ring, like a phone or a school bell. It's a ding-dong sort of ring, like . . .

Church bells.

There's a moment when everyone is just listening, looking around like the bell and its church will fall straight from the sky, but then Rick is moving. And we're all moving, like a pack of wolves. "What direction?" asks Shane.

"I think that way," Rick points, his feet still going. "I'm pretty sure."

"Damn, it's hard to tell out here . . ."

"If we hear them," says Carol, "Maybe Sophia does, too!"

Maybe someone is calling others, thinks Glenn. Or signaling they've found Sophia, thinks Andrea. Sophia could be ringing them herself, thinks Rick. These people talk too much, that's what I think, only I keep that to myself. I listen hard and it seems Rick's got the direction right, and my dad's letting him lead, so even after the bells stop I follow Rick without protest through thinner and thinner woods, until we reach a clearing. In the middle of this clearing is a white building, about the size of a really nice house. It being a church would never have crossed my mind had it not been for the headstones scattered out between us and the building. A graveyard. An old fashioned graveyard.

"That can't be it," Shane says as we pause at the tree line, everyone panting. "Got no steeple, no bells."

He's right, but –

Rick runs to the building. Shane calls after him but he doesn't stop, and now the whole group is bolting towards the may-be-a-church.

I'm fast, I should say that right now. Back in school, I was even faster than nearly every boy in my class. But I'm still a kid, so I can't keep up with Rick and Shane and my dad, not yet. I pump my legs hard, though, content for now with just staying ahead of Carl and Lori and keeping my dad fairly close as our group races through the graves, around the building, to a set of stone steps leading up to red double-doors.

My dad and Rick leap up the stairs and position themselves by these doors, one of them on each side, Rick with his handgun drawn and my dad with his crossbow at the ready. Rick gives Dad a signal and then they each open one door. Shane and Glenn step up behind them immediately, so I can't really see inside, but sometimes ears are all you need. I hear the snarling. I know what it means.

Lori's next to me. She's drawn the weapon she chose earlier, this vicious, curved blade about half the length of her arm, and for one crazy second I think she's going to go in after the walkers herself, but no, of course not, she hands the blade to Rick and he heads into the church. So does Shane. My dad, he gives his crossbow to Glenn in exchange for an odd hooked weapon, and in he goes, too. With them out of the way, I can see now, I can see that this  _is_  a church – there's a crucifix hanging at the front – and I can also see that there are three of the walkers, and they're standing in the pews like it's Sunday morning, and there's something very unsettling about that.

Lori squats in front of Carl and talks to him, distracting him, I guess. Carol would do the same for Sophia, I'm sure, but Sophia's not here, and so Carol turns her back to the door and covers her mouth, alone in her world. Me, I watch, even though I'm not sure I'm supposed to. I watch as Rick reaches his walker, the only one on the church's left side, and slams his blade into its head, splitting the skull. I watch Shane stab his walker straight through the forehead. And I watch my dad creep up behind the last walker, a used-to-be woman going after Shane, and chop it through the face.

I'm learning that there's usually a silence. After something like this happens, I mean, after we get violent, after we put down walkers. There's a small pause when it stops, when the killing is over and we're left alone again. Just us people. I don't know why. Maybe it's just my imagination, even.

Now Carol's going through the doorway, Glenn's relaxing, Lori's standing. I take a step forward, then another, and I'm on red carpet. I'd almost forgotten carpet.

_"Sophia!"_ Rick screams, and there's so much feeling and rage in that scream that it spooks me and I nearly trip, but I catch myself and lean on a pew, letting the others pass me by and watching my dad. He's at the front of the church, staring up at the crucifix, and it looks like he's praying but I know he's not.

"I'm telling you, it's the wrong church," says Shane, his back on the corpses. He's still holding his knife in his hand, even as blood drips from it and stains this carpet, such a nice carpet. "It's got no steeple, Rick. There's no steeple."

The words are barely out of his mouth when the bell sounds again.  _DING DING DING DING_ , and it could be Sunday morning with my mom –

Dad rushes from the front, through the group, past me, out the doors. I go after him without a thought, my feet skipping over the steps, almost stumbling, not quite, and I'm on solid ground and the others are behind me and I'm following Dad around the church and there are no bells, no bells, just a long pipe-looking thing running from a small box about a foot over my head all the way up to the roof, where a speaker is. A speaker. A speaker blaring out the sound of that bell.

Nobody's ringing anything. We're alone here.

Glenn opens the small box and breaks something, I don't see what, and the bell stops. My dad, he walks around for a second, head down, and then tells the group, or maybe just Rick or just Shane or just Carol, I don't know, "A timer. It's on a timer."

No bells. No real bells. No people. No Sophia.

"I'm gonna go back in for a bit," says Carol. Nobody else speaks, but I hear them moving. I hear the steps they take back to the church, but I can't seem to stop looking at the timer, at that small box. Glenn leaves that small box, though, and my dad comes over to me. His hand touches my head.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's get in the shade for a minute."

And so we go back into the church, and it is a little cooler in here, but not much. At least there aren't so many bugs. Me and Dad, we stand in the back. Some part of me is aware of being tired but I don't feel like sitting down. I just chew on my knuckle. Rick and Carl and Shane and Glenn are all back here, too, but not close to us. Up at the front, right before the crucifix and on her knees, is Carol. She  _is_  praying, I think. Lori sits in the pew behind her and I wonder if she's praying, too.

Dad's got his crossbow back from Glenn. He kneels down, props it up, and rests on it, the way he does sometimes. He snags my hand from my lips. "Quit that. Them fingers ain't gonna have skin left."

I pop them instead, and Dad doesn't say anything about that, even though my mom hated it. Maybe he doesn't know. He hands me a canteen and I drink. I didn't realize I was thirsty. I give it back to him and say quietly, "I like this church. Or, I would've liked it, I think."

He screws the cap back on the canteen. "Didn't your mom take you to church?"

"Yeah. But it was a lot bigger. Not small like this one. Not in the middle of the woods, either. I like that."

He doesn't say anything.

Carol's speaking. Speaking to the crucifix, or to God, I guess. Can't make out the words. I can hear her voice, though, her quivering, weak voice. Voices like that annoy me sometimes, because you gotta be tough in life or why even try? But right now, right now I can't blame Carol. I don't want to. All that quiver in her voice does is make my chest tighten.

"It'da been better if it were me," I say just for Dad to hear, because maybe I've got to let this nagging thought out of my head or it might just grow and eat me all up. And because this is a little easier to talk about than what he asked me if I needed to talk about this morning, and maybe it'll make him forget all that.

"If what were you?"

"If it'd been me and not Sophia. She's just a kid."

". . . Ain't she two years older'n you?"

I sigh. "Yeah, but . . . I'm different." Dad should know that. He  _has_ to know that, surely, it's obvious, isn't it? "I'm tough. I know how to make it out in the woods. She don't."

_Doesn't._

I shrug, picking at my fingernail. "It just woulda been better," I murmur. "That's all I'm sayin'."

Dad looks at me for a minute. It's one of his thinking looks. Then, "You'd best not let me hear you talk like that again, Sydney Rose."

What? What'd I say that was bad? "Why not?"

"'Cause I don't like it. Now c'mon."

Carol and Lori are coming down the aisle, back to the door. Dad's standing and I do, too, and I want to know if I just made him mad, and how that happened if I did, but it hits me that I've been in a church for a while and I've watched at least one person pray and I haven't even thought to pray myself. That might be some sort of a sin. I glance over at the crucifix, at the figure of a dying Jesus, thin and bloody. I certainly have a lot to pray for.

But my dad and everyone else are going for the doors. Maybe I'll pray later. Or maybe praying is a waste of time, I don't know. But I figure if God listens to prayers he'd be more likely to hear Carol's than mine, anyway. At least at the moment. So I duck my head and walk out the door.


	7. The Gunshot

"Y'all gotta follow the creek bed back," Shane announces outside, where the group has all gathered underneath a tree with far-stretching branches. "Okay, Daryl, you're in charge. Me and Rick, we're just gonna hang back. Search this area another hour or so just to be thorough."

"You're splittin' us up?" my dad says. "You sure?"

"Yeah, we'll catch up to you."

"I wanna stay, too." That's Carl. He steps forward, looking from his dad to Shane without blinking. I eye him. "I'm her friend," he says.

I remember him crawling up into that truck, getting right next to the body, tugging out the weapons, and I think now what I thought then: The kid has spine.

Rick and Lori exchange looks that I guess don't come out to mean no, because Lori then tells Carl, "Just be careful, okay?" and hugs him, saying something about him growing up. I consider asking if I can stay, too – I don't like the idea of Carl getting to do something and me not – but I brush that idea away. My place is with my dad.

Rick takes Lori in his arms, telling her goodbye, and as she pulls away, he stops her and says, "Here, take this." He holds out his handgun, barrel down, the way you're supposed to give a gun to someone, I know. "Remember how to use it?"

Lori gives him a look. Lori reminds me of my mom sometimes. Like anytime she gives a look like that. "I'm not takin' your gun and leaving you unarmed."

"Here, I got a spare."

My dad. He makes a gun appear, some little gun I've never seen on him before, and he hands it to Lori. "Take it." He gives Rick a nod and Rick nods back, and I know at that moment that my dad's not mad at Rick for leaving Merle behind anymore. Does that mean I shouldn't be?

But he left Sophia, too . . .

_I was going to leave T-Dog._

I'm confused and I'm tired and bugs keep biting me. I slap one away now and let Dad nudge me forward, and we walk off, me and Dad and Lori and Carol and Glenn and Andrea. I look over my shoulder once, and even though Carl and Rick and Shane are walking off in another direction, Carl's looking over his shoulder, too. He's almost too far away to tell at this point, but I think our eyes meet. And I think he gives me a smile. And I think I might smile back, just a little, just to be polite.

Or maybe because – and this is just a  _maybe_ because – he might be starting to grow on me.

But that is a  _big_ maybe.

. . . . .

Going back, the six of us don't say much, the same way it was this morning. My eyes scope the woods with every step I take, looking not just for walkers but for something, anything – a patch of clothing, a ripped-off knot of blonde hair, maybe even that doll – that points to Sophia. But I see nothing. None of us do.

Sometime in the late afternoon Carol sits on a log without a warning. "So this is it? This the whole plan?" There's hopelessness and disgust in her voice.

My dad sighs, leaning up against a tree. The log Carol is on reaches over here, by him, and so I sit down. An odd mix of pain and pleasure rushes through my legs. My muscles have this bad habit of not telling me how tired they are until they can't take much more. I frown and rub my thigh, telling those muscles to deal with it. Dad, he says, "I guess the plan is to whittle us down into smaller and smaller groups."

And I don't like the way he says that, I don't like the edge of doubt in his voice. But he catches me watching him and winks, so I know we're okay. As he does that, though, Andrea's saying nastily, "Carrying knives and pointy sticks . . . I see  _you_  have a gun."

Does she mean my dad? I turn to her, but no, she's not talking to him. Her eyes are on Lori, who looks at her in a cold way that doesn't match the air around us. "Why, you want it?" She puts her backpack down on this log and draws the pistol, holds it out to Andrea. "Here. Take it. I'm sick of the looks you're givin' me."

Andrea glares back at Lori, mouth slightly open like Lori just said something completely unfair, but she's not wrong, Lori. Me, I pay attention, and I've seen those angry glances Andrea keeps throwing Lori's way. I mean, Andrea looks angry a lot lately, but still. She takes the gun now, though, in a slapping way that suggests she thinks the whole thing is completely ridiculous.

My mother would have rolled her eyes at her, and so I do.

Lori sits back down on the log. "Alla you . . ."

All of us? All of us giving her bad looks? I haven't given her a single bad look, didn't know there was reason to. Still don't think there is. My dad gave her the gun, so it must be okay.

But Lori's talking to Carol now. "Honey, I can't imagine what you're going through, and I would do anything to stop it, but you have gotta stop blamin' Rick."

There's a tingling on the back of my neck. Stop blaming Rick. Rick, who left Sophia? I squirm.

"It is in your face  _every_   _time_  you look at him. And when Sophia ran, he didn't hesitate, did he? Not for a second."

Carol looks away from her. I do, too.

"I don't know that any of us would have gone after her the way he did – "

My dad would have, I know that. But I don't say anything. I want to chew my knuckle but, since Dad's standing right over me, settle for picking at the skin instead. Because Lori's making good points and making it hard for me to be mad at Rick and making little streams of guilt pool together in my stomach. Especially now that I know my dad's not mad at him, either.

" – or made the hard decisions that he had to make or that anybody could have done it any differently. Anybody?"

No one says a word.

"Y'all look to him," says Lori, "And then you blame him when he's not perfect. If you think you can do this without him, go right ahead. Nobody is stopping you!" She lifts a water bottle to her lips and takes a drink in a somehow heated way. She's just finished putting the cap back on when Andrea holds the pistol back out to her. She takes it silently.

"We should keep moving," Andrea says, and her voice has softened a bit. And I know that Lori's managed to change some part of some game here, and I think that's a good thing. She's been nice to me.

Lori pulls her backpack on and stands, along with Carol. My muscles beg me, beg me  _no_ , but I grit my teeth and make myself get up. It's not so bad once I'm on my feet, but I know my legs'll go right back to aching later. I'll be fine, though.

More walking. More bugs, more heat. I love the woods, I do, but it's best in the morning. Yeah, in the morning, and in the middle of fall. Waking up in a cold tent, wrapping myself in a puffy coat three times too big, holding a thermos of coffee I won't drink just to keep my fingers warm, listening for rustling in the dry leaves . . . Oh, I'd come home with a sore throat, and Mom would chew my dad out, but I didn't care, I loved it, and I'd sure love it right now. I'd love a lot of things right now.

Like for my dad to not be mad at me. But  _is_  he mad at me? I'm not sure. He called me  _Sydney Rose_  back at the church, which is never a good sign, but it's not like I did anything bad. I was just talking.

I decide to feel out the situation.

"I beat T-Dog in poker," I tell Dad. We're at the head of the group, of course, basically alone.

"Yeah? Win anything good offa him?"

"We didn't bet."

"Didn't bet? Ain't you s'posed to be a Dixon?"

I giggle, and I know then that he's not mad. He's joking, and he doesn't joke when he's mad. And I'm relieved. But I still don't get –

The gunshot stops my thoughts short. It stops everything short. My dad jerks his head around and his hands tense on his crossbow, even though the shot was far off, echoing around us like it could have been just a dream. But it wasn't. It was a gunshot, very real, and it came from behind us, and I don't see how there's any way it didn't have something to do with Rick and Shane and Carl.

Carl.

And suddenly I really wish I had asked Dad if I could go with them.


	8. Kids Like Carl

Dad makes us keep moving after the gunshot. He actually, literally has to make me. I'm stuck for a while, hearing him and the others talk but not listening to anything that's being said, just staring behind us at the thick woods that offer no answer and gripping my knife as if I'm planning on charging whatever threat there may or may not be, and the others move and I don't, and then Dad's hand clamps down on my shoulder and pulls me along, prods me in front of him. "C'mon, Little Bit. Nothin' we can do."

"But –"

"Walk, Sydney."

And so I do, we all do, but . . . but it was a gunshot! Gunshots don't happen for no reason!

And Lori, Lori's concerned. I know this because I keep checking over my shoulder as we go along, checking for some sort of sign as to what's happened, and half the time I do this I see Lori doing the same thing. And finally, maybe a half-hour after that shot, I hear Andrea ask, "You still worrying about it?" and I stop and turn and see that Lori's stopped and turned, too.

"It was a gunshot," she answers simply.

"We all heard it," Dad says, just as simply.

Lori looks at him then. "Why one? Why just  _one_  gunshot?"

Dad does a half-shrug before scanning around us. "Maybe they took down a walker."

He doesn't believe that, though. I know he doesn't, because I don't, and guess what? Neither does Lori.

"Please don't patronize me," she says.  _Patronize_ means talk to you like you're a little kid. One time I told Merle to quit patronizing me, and then he couldn't stop laughing, it got me so mad. "You know Rick wouldn't risk a gunshot to put down one walker. Or Shane. They'd do it quietly."

She's right, she's right, you kill walkers hands-on or with arrows whenever you can. So the gunshot makes no sense. None. And that's why Lori's worried, that's why I'm . . . I'm a little bit worried.

"Shouldn't they have caught up with us by now?" says anxious Carol.

My dad comes closer to them, the three women and Glenn, and he sighs out, "There's nothin' we can 'bout it anyway. Can't go around these woods chasin' echoes."

His back is to me and so I feel free to glare at him. But then I stop, I make myself stop, because I'm smart and I know he's right. I don't like it, but he's right.

"So what do we do?" Lori asks shortly, pressing her lips together, eyeing Dad.

"Same as we've been," he replies. "Beat the bush for Sophia, work our way back to the highway."

Andrea talks next, and her voice is different from before, because it's purely kind and gentle and not much like the Andrea I've been getting used to. "I'm sure they'll hook up with us back at the RV."

With that, Dad starts walking again, and I start walking again, and so does Glenn, and so does Lori, even. But behind me I hear that kind and gentle voice speak again. "I'm sorry for what you're going through. I know how you feel."

Andrea's talking to Carol, and she's talking about Sophia, I know. The rest of us pause, and my dad looks irritated but doesn't say anything, and I watch as Carol offers Andrea a little smile. "I suppose you do. Thank you." She looks out into the woods, and her eyes are glassy. Wet. "The thought of her, out here, by herself . . . It's the not knowin' that's killing me. I just keep hopin' and prayin' she doesn't wind up like Amy . . ."

Which doesn't seem like the right thing to say. And I think Carol realizes that, because her jaw drops almost as soon as she's said it. "Oh, God," she murmurs, taking Andrea's hands. "That's the worst thing I ever said . . ."

But Andrea shakes her head and smiles in a way that isn't happy but I think is meant to tell Carol it's alright. "We're all hoping and praying with you. For what it's worth."

Then my dad leaves my side. He steps up to the two. "I'll tell you what it's worth –  _not a damn thing_. It's a waste of time, all this hopin' and prayin'."

I flinch, because that is  _absolutely_ not the right thing to say. My mind yanks me back to the morning after the fish fry, when the grownups were dealing with the dead, and my dad pointed around at all of the blood and bodies and yelled that the survivors had this coming for leaving Merle behind . . . That wasn't the right thing to say, either . . . Mom was always better about knowing what to say and when to say it . . .

But my dad keeps going, talking straight to Carol, and his voice is sort of scary but not really, it's different than his usual scary voice, and I can't explain why, but what he says? What he says, the words, they're nice. "'Cause we're gonna locate that little girl, and she's gonna be just  _fine_."

He spins away, coming back to me, just like that. "Am I the only one Zen around here? Good Lord!"

He tugs my ponytail on his way past, and I know, I know that he's not mad at them, or at anybody, he's just . . . trying to calm everyone down. Keep things running smooth. I hope the others get that. He's good, my dad. Rough around the edges, Mom called him before. But he's good.

And we move.

. . . . .

I hate sweat. Dad told me once that people sweat to keep cool. Well, I don't think it works, because I'm sweating a lot and I'm still really hot. And the bugs, they like the sweat, I think. Something chomps into the back of my neck now, and I smack it and then wince because my neck is bared and I'm pretty sure I'm getting sunburnt, even with all the leaves casting shadows on us.

But we're close. I know we're close. It's been an hour since we last stopped, and everything around here is familiar, familiar and – in my mind – connecting with images of the RV. I think about asking my dad how much farther but don't, because I don't want him to know that I can't tell. Luckily, about two minutes after I decide not to ask, Lori does.

"Not much," Dad tells her. "Maybe a hundred yards. As the crow flies."

"Too bad we're not crows," grumbles Andrea. She's tired. We all are, except maybe my dad. He doesn't tire easily. I pick up my pace and jump a little ahead of him, just to show him that I could keep going, too, if we had to.

My mind is still on the gunshot, though. I know we came out here looking for Sophia, and maybe it's wrong, but I can't stop thinking about it, that  _BANG_ , mysterious and bad. What did it mean? What happened? If it wasn't for a walker, then what was it for? And who did it come from? I understand what Carol said, I think, even though it was about Sophia. I understand how the not knowing is the worst –

A scream. Andrea's scream. I look, and what? She's not here? She's not with us, she's not, there's only five of us here, Andrea,  _Andrea_  –

My head fuzzes up, thoughts stop for a minute as my heart bangs away, but that doesn't happen to my dad. He's already running as Lori shouts Andrea's name, as I manage to come back to my senses. The rest of us fly after Dad, to Andrea, to the screams, to –

Through the woods, through the woods, just a little ways, but how did she get this far without us noticing? What was she doing?

Wait, is that a  _horse?_

Yes, yes, it's a horse, and there's a person on it, too. We near and I see that that person is a woman, a young woman with short brown hair and a flowered shirt. Beyond the horse is a fallen but alright – and I think alright – Andrea, and close to her is a walker, but the walker's on the ground. Is it dead? It's not moving. Dad's stopped, and I stop, and I edge up close to him, my eyes lingering on the motionless walker.

"Lori?" The woman on the horse says to Andrea. She's putting away a baseball bat, sticking it into a pocket hooked onto her saddle, and I look from the bat to the walker and I get it. "Lori Grimes?"

"I'm Lori," Lori says from my left, and I'm confused, I'm confused, how – ?

"Rick sent me," the woman says to her, talking fast. "You gotta come now!"

"What?"

"There's been a accident! Carl's been shot!"

Carl's been shot.

_Carl's been shot._

_Carl. Shot._

I don't look at Lori. I don't look at my dad. My eyes are trapped on this woman, this woman on this horse with this news, this news, this news that doesn't make any sense, because Carl is just a kid, and kids don't get shot, especially not kids like Carl, kids who have spine but a nice enough smile that no one would ever, ever draw on them, and . . . and . . .

"He's still alive, but you've gotta come now!"

Alive. Alive. Alive. But  _still_ alive. Not just  _alive. Still_ alive _._

More words. Words, words. Lori's getting up on the horse, sitting behind the woman. My dad's shouting. The woman's shouting. Glenn says  _uh-huh_. The horse is leaving. Carl's been shot. Carl's been shot. The walker starts to get up and my dad sends an arrow through its head. Movement, movement. Andrea standing. My dad saying my name. My dad grabbing my arm, bending down to me. My name again. Sydney. Sydney. But Carl's been shot . . .

"Sydney!"

Dad's taken a hold of the back of my head. I blink. I blink. Carl. No. Now, here, woods, Dad, focus. I blink. I look at my dad.

"We gotta get back," he tells me. "We're almost there, let's go."

"Carl . . ." I hear myself mutter.

"I know. But we gotta go. So c'mon, don't make me drag you, I'm tired. C'mon!"

He's tired? But he doesn't get tired. Not often. Not the point, not what I need to think about. What do I need to think about? The RV. Get back to the RV. Things will be okay at the RV. I'm nodding. My legs move, and they're numb, but not because they're spent, they're numb in a different way. My body's numb. Everywhere. Inside and out. This is wrong. This is all so, so wrong, because kids like Sophia don't get lost in the woods and kids like Carl don't get shot.

Still alive. Still. Still.

Not  _going to live_. Not  _okay_.  _Still alive._

_Still_.


	9. Echoes, Pills, and Being Sneaky

Dad and Merle and I found a bluff once on a hunting trip. Or, maybe they'd found it before and were showing it to me, I can't remember. What I do remember is that my dad showed me how I could yell off the bluff – "Go right on ahead, Daryl, you just scare off all the damn game," Merle had griped – and have whatever I said echo back to me. One time I yelled something, I think just my name, and it came back to me three times. I thought that was pretty impressive. But that echo? That has nothing on the one that bounces around in my head as we walk the final stretch to the highway, as we climb up the hill, as we reach the guardrail and see Dale standing on the road with his rifle.

This echo is  _Still alive . . . Still alive . . . Still alive . . ._

 _Carl's been shot_ will jump in occasionally. But mostly it's just that, just  _Still alive_. These are the words that haunt me as I make myself climb over the guardrail, place my feet on asphalt, stand straight and be steady.

Glenn, Glenn's talking. Listen, Sydney, listen.

". . . like Zorro on a horse and took Lori." Glenn's out of breath, from the hill, from the topic, from both, I'm not sure.

Dale turns to my dad, stepping over the guardrail after me. "You let her?"

"Climb down out of my ass, old man!" Dad's in a bad mood now. Somewhere in my mind I wonder how long that'll last, but mostly my mind is too busy dealing with pounding hooves and gasps and  _Still alive . . . Still alive . . . Still alive . . ._ Dad's talking more. "Rick sent her. She knew Lori's name, and Carl's." He brushes past Dale, over to the motorcycle.

Dale's asking about screams then, Andrea's screams, but I don't pay it any mind. I'm following Dad over to the motorcycle. He puts his crossbow on the back and I lean against the car the bike's beside. But the throbbing in my legs reminds me that I've been walking all day, and so I sink to the ground.

"Hey," my dad says, sitting down beside me. The voice he used with Dale is gone, which offers me a tiny bit of relief. He hands me the canteen and I gulp some water down, and even though it's warm, it still feels good sliding down my throat. I'm a little more like me when I finish, the echo isn't as loud, and my heart isn't pounding in my ears anymore. Meanwhile, Dad says, "Gettin' shot ain't a death sentence. You heard her, Carl's alive."

I bite my lip, take two breaths. "She said 'still.' She said he was  _still_  alive. She didn't say . . ." My throat closes up and I cough. "I mean, she didn't say he'd be  _okay_  . . ."

Dad rubs my neck. "Stop it. You're overthinkin' that. We don't know nothin' about it, no matter what you think you heard."

"I don't  _think_  I heard anythin', you heard her, too! She said –"

"I said  _stop it_. Look, you're makin' yourself cry, we don't want that, do we?"

He's right on both accounts. A tear just slipped from my eye and I hate it. I grimace and put fists into my eye sockets, drowning out  _still still still_ with  _stop stop stop_. Dad keeps on rubbing my neck. The lump in my throat eventually dissolves and I remove my fists, see stars for a minute, and then feel almost normal again. Just really, really exhausted.

"Good girl," Dad murmurs. He kisses the side of my head and stands. "How 'bout I get us some food?"

"I ain't hungry."

"Well, you gotta eat."

So I let him walk off to dig something up, and I just sit there and chew on my knuckle with my head turned so he won't catch me at it, and I listen to the echo in my head, teasing me like a sixth-grader on the playground at school.

. . . . .

We gather beside the RV door less than twenty minutes later (all of us except T-Dog, who Dale says it sick). Apparently at some point when the woman on the horse was talking to us, she gave us directions to where Carl was. Some house – no, a farm – close by. Within a few miles. Dale wants us to go tonight.

"I won't do it," Carol says as soon as he suggests this. "We can't just leave."

I look up at her from my place next to Dad. I really want to lean against him, my dad, close my eyes and rest and let him set his hand on my head or my shoulder, but this is an important discussion, and I'm old enough to be a part of it, and so I cross my arms and listen, listen as Dale sighs and explains.

"Carol," he says wearily, leaning against the RV's open door, "The group is split. We're scattered and weak."

"What if she comes back? And we're not here?" Carol's voice is high. "It could happen . . ."

Sophia. Sophia, delicate Sophia. In all of my thoughts about Carl and guns and bullets and  _still alive still alive still alive_ , Sophia has slipped farther back into my mind than she should have. Now I pull her up again, and I imagine her showing up here, dirty and bleeding but alright, only she finds herself all alone on a dark, lonely highway . . .

"If she came back and no one was here . . ." I say faintly. All eyes turn to me, and I turn mine to the ground. I don't want to say anything else, so I just shake my head, let that do my talking.

"That would be awful," Andrea finishes for me, and I go from shaking my head to nodding it.

"Okay," says my dad. I look up and he's nodding, too. "We gotta plan for this. I say tomorrow morning is soon enough to pull up stakes."

I swallow. "But Sophia –"

"Listen, Syd," he says softly before addressing the other four again. "That'll give us enough time to rig a big sign. Leave her some supplies."

Yes. Yes, that takes care of Sophia and gets us to Carl. Yes, I like this plan. Dad's smart.

He gestures at me. "Syd and I'll hold here tonight. Stay with the RV."

"If the RV is staying, I am too," says Dale.

"Thank you," says Carol, looking from one man to the other. "Thank you both."

A muscle in my calf cramps. I cave and lean on my dad. His arm falls loosely against my side, the tips of his fingers tracing a circle on my arm.

"I'm in," I hear Andrea say just as I close my eyes.

Glenn's next. "Well, if you're all staying, then I'm –"

"No, not you, Glenn," Dale interrupts. "You're going. Take Carol's Cherokee."

"Me? Why is it always  _me_?"

"You have to find this farm, reconnect with our people, and see what's going on," Dale says, his tone leaving no room for argument. "But most important, you have to get T-Dog there. This is not an option."

T-Dog? It's that bad? I open my eyes and follow Dale's pointing arm over to the other end of the RV, where T-Dog is hunched over, covered with a blanket. "That cut has gone from bad to worse," Dale says. "He has a very serious blood infection. Get him to that farm –"

"Hold on, babe . . ." Dad murmurs to me, nudging me away from him and going over to the motorcycle. Dale's Papaw-like voice reminds me of a lullaby even as it's going on about antibiotics, and I have to work to keep my eyelids up as Dad rummages through the motorcycle bags. He pulls off some white rags and shoots Dale a look just before his other hand comes up with a big plastic bag full of orange medicine bottles. It's Merle's, I've seen it once or twice.

"Keep your oily rags off my brother's motorcycle." Dad throws those rags at Dale as he comes back, plopping the bag onto the hood of a car. "Why'd you wait till now to say anything? Got my brother's stash."

"What stash?" I ask.

Dad doesn't seem to hear me. He rifles through the medicine. "Crystal . . . X, don't need that . . . Got some kickass painkillers." He tosses one of the bottles to Glenn, looks again, and then tosses another bottle to Dale. "Oxycycline. Not the generic stuff, neither. That's first class . . . Merle got the clap on occasion."

I'm lost. "What's the cl –"

"Don't ask, Little Bit."

. . . . .

I end up falling asleep before nightfall, right after Glenn and T-Dog leave. I knock out in the RV's passenger seat, of course, because I think it's sort of my spot now. I dream of a doll that gets lost in the woods and shot, shot by Andrea on accident, and Dale's there, shaking his head and telling Andrea he told her so, he told her so. Then the doll takes some pills and heals up, and then it suddenly turns into Sophia, and she runs from us all, and I go after her, chase her into a barn, but instead of Sophia I find Carl, and  _he's_  shot . . . right in the head, like a walker . . .

I wake up and I hate dreams.

It's dark outside. There's a blanket at my feet and noises behind me tell me I'm not alone. I listen. Two sounds try to drown each other out: This clicking, mechanical noise and sobbing. I don't know about that first one, but the second is Carol. Those sobs, they reach into me and clench my stomach, hurting, hurting really bad. I curl up into a ball and don't even bother pretending I can go back to sleep now. I want my dad. Where –

And just then: "I need my clip now."

That's him, that's Dad. I twist around. He's standing by the table, crossbow over his shoulder, and I can see the back of a blonde head – Andrea's sitting there. She hands him something, the clip from his gun, I guess – what's she doing with that? – and as he fixes the weapon up he tells her, "I'm gonna walk the road. Look for the girl."

The sobbing pauses. My dad turns his head to the back room, where I'd bet Carol is. I see his head move in a quick nod. Then he turns this way, going for the door.

"Dad? I wanna go." I put my feet on the ground, my eyes wide. I'm ready.

But Dad, he shakes his head when he sees me. "Nuh-uh. You stay here, get some sleep."

"I slept. I ain't tired no more. Please?"

"No, Sydney. Go back to sleep." Then he's gone. I sigh and slump against the seat. About ten seconds after Dad steps out of the left-open door, Andrea's up from the table. She brushes gazes with me as she follows Dad outside.

"I'm coming, too," I hear her say.

"I'm goin' for a walk," Dad says loudly. He must be talking to Dale, yes, Dale will be keeping watch up top. "Shine some light in the forest. If she's out there, it'll give her somethin' to look at."

"Do you think that's a good idea right now?"

"Dale," Andrea snaps, and that's all she says, but I know that sometimes grownups pack a lot of meaning into single words. Like in that word, Andrea just told Dale that she's really mad at him.

Footsteps, then nothing. I watch out the passenger window as the figures of Dad and Andrea fade into darkness, Dad's spotlight the only sign that they're still out there as they move among the cars, over to the woods.

I'm mad. Dad should have let me go. What am I supposed to do? Sit here and think about Carl, lying somewhere with a hole through his body? Or Sophia, off in the woods alone without a clue of what to do to stay alive?

I can't do anything about Carl. Not tonight. But I  _could_ have done something about Sophia. I  _could_ have gone to look for her.

But  _no_.

Dad still treats me like a little kid in a lot of ways, and it ain't fair. When I told him how Sophia was just a kid and he acted surprised that I thought of her that way? That was wrong. I may be younger, but I can handle myself  _way_ better than that twelve-year-old baby. I wonder what she's doing right now . . . huddling against a tree . . . or running through the dark . . . scared, clinging to her doll . . .

And with those thoughts, those simple, sad thoughts, the poison in my heart – the fury – it all drains away. I'm left empty of everything but guilt and pity, and it doesn't help that Carol's whimpering. I can't just sit here. I can't just sit here and listen to her and do nothing while her daughter's missing and maybe even –

Not going to think about that. That's not how it is.

I check out my window. I can still see my dad's spotlight.

I can't, I  _can't_ just sit here. I have to at least help. Even if my dad doesn't know it . . .

Oh, he'd kill me if he saw.

So I won't let him see.

I can be sneaky.

I feel my waist. My knife, my nice new one, all sharp and ready, it's still hooked onto my jeans.

My legs make the decision for me, really. They were so tired earlier today, but now they're as alive and strong as ever. They lift me off the seat. They form into tiptoes. They take me down the RV steps, quiet as a mouse, through the open door and into the warm moonlit night, and then it's too late to turn back, isn't it?

I press against the side of the RV, keeping out of Dale's sight. How to do this, how to do this . . . The cars. I'm small enough to hide behind the cars, if I'm really careful, and even crawl under most of them, like I did with that truck when I went to T-Dog yesterday, during the walker attack.

_Dad's going to get so mad._

_He won't see me. He'll never see me._

I take a deep breath. I still have an eye on Dad's spotlight, bobbing by the guardrail, but I have to be quick if I want to keep it in sight, and I  _definitely_ have to keep it in sight, I can't throw all caution to the wind.

I dart to the nearest car and duck behind it, my footsteps quiet – this is where being half-raised by a hunter comes in handy. I wait for Dale to call my name, to call my dad, to ruin my plan. But he doesn't. I'm being too sneaky.

I look over at the next car. It's high enough off the ground for me to just slip right under it, and so I do. From then on, it's pretty much that easy. I crawl along the asphalt, and my elbows don't like it, but I grit my teeth and do it, because this is for Sophia. Sophia, all alone and scared.

I reach the guardrail and half-stand. Dad's light is still there, far but not too far into the woods. I risk a look over the car I've just come up from and see that Dale is looking the other way. Perfect. I climb over the guardrail and those strong legs of mine are clumsy carrying me down the slope, but I manage to stay on my feet and then I'm on flat ground again, and the hill is now guarding me from Dale's eyes. I'm home free. All I have to do from here is follow Dad's spotlight and look for Sophia.

I take one step forward and that's when it occurs to me that I'm alone in these woods for the first time. Well, not really  _alone_ , I'd never do that. I'm pretty much with my dad, he's right up there, even if he doesn't know it. But I'm closer to alone than I've ever been before. I look into the dark forest and a tingling feeling that feels a little like fear crawls up my ribs, seeps into my gut.

But I know the woods. Even at night, I know the woods. And I'm brave. And this is for Sophia. I take a breath, huff it out, focus my attention on Dad's spotlight. And into the woods I go.


	10. Waste of an Arrow

My dad said he was shining a light for Sophia to see, but the reasons go beyond that, I realize too late. Walking in the woods in the dark, with a roof of leaves blocking out most of the moonlight, is not what I could call easy. My eyes adjust alright, but I still stumble more than a few times as I follow Dad and Andrea, two jumping lights – one smaller than the other, Andrea must have brought a flashlight – that I keep about eighty or so feet ahead of me. Sometimes closer. Yeah, I try to keep as close as possible, especially since the lights are facing the opposite direction of me and it feels like they could just slip away at any second and leave me alone in the black. I also like to hear the sounds of their voices, my dad's, Andrea's. And I like to keep away from the things that move behind me, things that crunch leaves, break branches. Though that's all probably just my imagination. Or just a squirrel or rabbit or snake or something. I know that. But still.

It's a challenge, keeping up with Dad and Andrea as we travel deeper and deeper into the forest, since not only am I doing it without any light but I have to be extra quiet. I'm not as good as my dad at making my footsteps light, soundless, but I'm still pretty good, and I do it, squinting at the ground sometimes but mostly just relying on luck to keep me from stepping on something I don't want to step on.

And I look for Sophia, of course, look for her shape in the shadows, clues in the night. I even call to her a few times, in a whisper. But I never get an answer.

Sometimes I can make out what Dad and Andrea are saying to each other, but that usually means I've gotten too close and need to back off and so I only catch a few things here and there. Like one time, when Dad says, "She could be holed off in a farmhouse somewhere. People get lost, and they survive. Happens all the time."

"She's only twelve," Andrea replies.

"So? My kid's ten. She'd make it through, no problem."

I grin. He sounds proud, in his own way.

"And hell, I was younger than both of 'em and I got lost. Nine days . . ."

And that's all I hear, because I know I should hang back farther, even though Dad's never told me this story and want to hear more. Maybe I can figure out a way to bring it up later.

We've been out here thirty minutes when I fall. The underbrush is heavy and tricky, which I can handle fine in the daytime, but things are more complicated at night. So something catches my ankle mid-step and sends me down. My knees collide with the ground and I skid a bit and my left knee burns in a way that lets me know I've just managed to cut it, even through these jeans. Worse, I make noise, and that forces me to drop all the way down, flat, as the grownups' lights spin this way. I hear Dad's voice, then Andrea's. Silence. Dad's voice again. And footsteps. I peek, and they're moving on. I sigh and sit up. I touch my knee and feel a small hole in the denim and warm liquid that of course is blood. The cut stings, but I don't think it's deep. I don't look around to see what I cut myself on, but I don't have to, because my hand presses on something else sharp on my way to a stand, and it doesn't press hard but it presses enough, and I know: Thorns. I hate thorns.

But I'm tough and I have a job to do. So on I walk, turning to survey the area every now and again, whispering  _Sophia!_ and watching for walkers and ignoring the stinging pain and the spreading, sticky patch of wetness on my jean leg.

I can tell when something changes later on. Those two lights I'm following pause and then veer off a bit, going a slightly different direction than the one my dad's been on so far. My heart starts beating faster, but I focus on my footsteps, keeping them soft, can't let that change. I watch and creep along, but within a minute the lights have come to a full-on stop. My dad and Andrea are standing still. What's going on? I can hear them talking, can't tell what they're saying. I have to risk it, I have to. I allow myself a nibble on my knuckle before I walk slowly, silently, closer and closer to the two lights, until I can hear better. And when I  _can_  hear better, it's not just my dad and Andrea I'm hearing. There's a walker growling, too. There's a walker growling, and it's all I can do not to go running to my dad right then, punishment be damned. But I don't do that. I cover my mouth and listen, because if the walker's not dead yet my dad must have a reason, and Dad's talking right now.

"Dumbass didn't know enough to shoot himself in the head," he says, "Turned himself into a big, swingin' piece of bait. And a mess."

What? I step closer, I can't help it. Step, step, step, and I can see it then, I can make it out, a campsite.

Andrea's coughing. "You alright?" Dad asks.

"Tryin' not to puke."

"Go ahead, if you gotta."

_I'm_  already sick to my stomach just hearing them talk, just listening to the walker. I don't understand, but I have to see. Like a car wreck. I move closer, I sneak along, closer, closer, until I'm right on top of the campsite, until I can see the whole place and the back of Dad's head and Andrea, stooped over, saying she's fine but she needs to talk about something else, asking about how my dad learned to shoot, and I don't listen to his answer, because I'm too focused on the thrashing walker hanging from a tree beyond the two. My dad has his spotlight on it, so I can see it well, too well, and my belly swirls inside of me but I don't puke, I just stare, I stare at this living corpse as it dangles from the rope around its neck, its arms outstretched towards my dad, legs kicking around.

_Dumbass didn't know enough to shoot himself in the head._ This was suicide.

"I guess it's the closest he's been to food since he turned," Dad's saying now. "Look at him, hangin' up there like a big piñata." He moves his spotlight closer, puts it right on the legs of the walker, and I see that they're basically just bone. Bloody bone. My dad's voice is fearless, as always. "The other geeks came and ate all the flesh off his legs."

Andrea throws up. "I thought we were changing the subject!" she croaks after.

"Call that payback, for laughin' about my itchy ass," Dad replies, and I don't know what he's talking about and I don't care. I want us to leave. I want my dad to put the walker down and then I want us to leave.

Dad turns the spotlight this way and I shrink against a tree. But no,  _not_  this way, just close, he hasn't seen me, he's not going to see me. "Let's head back."

What? But the walker, the walker –

Andrea speaks for me, speaks for hidden-in-the-shadows me. "Aren't you gonna –"

My dad glances back at the geek. "No. He ain't hurtin' nobody. Ain't gonna waste an arrow, either."

The walker snarls, a rabid dog but worse, arms reaching and fingers grasping air.

"He made his choice," Dad says. "Opted out."

And I get it then, I get it. How this hanging walker could match up with suicide. This was a man, this was a man who got bit and decided to kill himself. Didn't shoot himself in the head, left his brain intact, so he became a walker. But he killed himself, still.

And that's when anger comes. Because my dad, my dad has that same easy,  _off_  tone he had earlier today, when we found the man in the tent who'd shot himself. I know what that tone means now. I get it, I get it, it means  _disapproval_. And I think, I think it might even mean  _you're a coward._ And that tone, that tone riles me up, because getting bit and killing yourself? That's  _Mom_. That's Mom, and there was  _nothing wrong with that_ , and my dad has no right,  _no right_  to be mad at Mom –

_Stop. Stop._ Now is not the time.

"Let him hang," Dad says, and I grit my teeth, dig my fingers into bark. But I keep swallowing back the mad and just listen, watch, as Andrea steps closer to the walker even as Dad steps away. There's silence between them before Dad moves to her again. "You wanna live now? Or not?"

Andrea looks at him.

"It's just a question."

" . . . An answer for an arrow. Fair?"

I  _think_  I hear Dad say yes, say  _mmhmm_ , and then I  _know_  he must have, because Andrea talks.

"I don't know if I want to live. Or if I have to, or . . . or if it's just a habit."

My anger is slowly replaced with sadness and I'm not totally sure why. I'm just sure I'm tired. I want to go back to the RV and sleep. I should never have left, this was all pointless, Sophia's still missing and I've gotten myself upset with Dad and I hate that and I'm just tired.

"That's not much of an answer," my dad says, but he raises his crossbow. Just as he does though, Andrea says something else, something even quieter.

"Sydney wanted to stay behind. Didn't she?" It's the kind of question that's really more of a statement, and it makes me bite into the side of my cheek. I taste blood and it reminds me about the cut on my knee, and I reach and feel it, and it's not bleeding so much anymore, but it still hurts a lot. I don't care. I move even closer to the campsite, leaning against the nearest tree, not wanting to miss a word.

My dad, my dad doesn't answer her right away. "My kid ain't suicidal," he eventually says. "That's your territory." And then there's the hiss of an arrow and the crunch of a skull and the walker in the tree is quiet and still.

"Waste of an arrow . . ." Dad mutters before turning. He walks off, going at an angle from where I am, so I'm safe. Andrea follows after a couple of seconds. Once their backs are to me, my foot decides it needs to move forward, and I don't want to, I don't want to see the walker any closer, but somehow I take one step, two, out from behind the tree, and then my foot lands on a branch and there's a  _snap_ that I swear can be heard all over Georgia. And now I'm in the spotlight in the worst possible way. I flinch against the light, but I would've flinched anyway at the tone of my dad's voice.

" _Sydney?_ Son of a –"

He turns the spotlight to the ground, and I catch his other arm falling from his waist, from his knife, and even without light, I can tell my dad's face has taken on a very bad expression that I don't see all that often. An expression that comes with a look that doesn't mean anything good for the person on the receiving end of it. And me, I'm that person right now.

He moves over to me,  _towers_  over me, and my shoulders slouch right away, all by themselves, because my body wants to make me small now.

"What the  _hell_  are you doin' out here?" he hisses.

I inhale. My eyes dart to Andrea, but she can't help me, and so I look at the ground. "I . . . I followed you."

Dad makes a huffing noise. Like he just can't believe how stupid I am.

"How'd you get past Dale?" asks Andrea.

I shrug. I need water. "I snuck under the cars."

"You snuck under . . .  _Jesus Christ_  . . ." Dad turns away for a second, takes a few steps, spins back. Oh, he's  _mad_. I knew it, I knew he would be, why did I let myself do this? Why didn't I stay in the RV?

"Like I said," he growls to Andrea. "We're headin' back, now." He takes my arm – his grip is stiff – and pulls me around, points me in the right direction. "My kid and me gotta have ourselves a little chat about  _mindin'_."

And I want to sink into the ground and hide forever.


End file.
